The meaning of adult education

THE MEANING OF ADULT
EDUCATION

E. C. Lindeman

-Published on demand by
UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS

University Microfilms Limited, High Wycomb, England
A Xerox Company, Ann A; bor, Michigan, U.S.A.

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5215
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1926a

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Mis is an authorized facsimile of the original book, and was
oduced in 1970 by microfilm-xerography by University
icrofilms, A Xerox Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

* * *

The Meaning
of ADULT
EDUCATION

by Eduard C.

Lindeman

Author of: The Community,
Social Discovery

NEW YORK

NEW REPUBLIC, INC

1926

-*! v*J

\W

I

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THE MEANING OF
ADULT EDUCATION

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Copyright, 1926, by
NEW REPUBLIC, INC

Printed in the USA.

AW

ALFRED DWIGHT SHEFFIELD

. CONTENTS

Foreword . . xiii

I For Those Who Need to Be Learn-
ers 3

II To Those Who Have Faith in In-
telligence 17

III With Respect to the Use of Power 31

IV In View of the. Need for Sblf-bx-

pression 47

V For Those Who Require Freedom . 65

VI For Those Who Would Create . 83

VII To Those Who Appreciate . . 97

VIII To an Age of Specialism . . .117

IX As Dynamic for Collective Enter-
prise 145

X In Terms of Method .... 169

Postscript 199

References 207

Index 217

[ix]

FOREWORD

FOREWORD

"Each of us," wrote Anatole France, "must
even be allowed to possess two or three philos-
ophies at the same time," for the purpose, I
presume, of saving our thought from the deadly
formality of consistency. No one can write
about education, particularly adult education,
without deserting at various points all "schools"
of pedagogy, psychology and philosophy. In-
congruities are obvious: one cannot, for ex-
ample, be a determinist and at the same time
advocate education; nor can idealism be made
to fit the actualities of life without recognition
of the material limitations which surround liv-
ing organisms. One cannot, that is, make use
of these opposed points of view if they are con-
ceived to be mutually-exclusive. But it is pre-

[xui]

FOREWORD

cisely because I do not so regard them that all
are included in this essay. Light comes from
learning — just as creation comes everywhere —
through integrations, syntheses, not through ex-
clusions.

The essay which follows will be best under-
stood in the light of personal experience. My
formal education began at the age of twenty-
one — after I had spent twelve years in various
occupations and industries. I could, of course,
speak the English language (at least, the Amer-
icanized version which workers used) but it
was not my natural medium of communication.
My initiation to formal education was, next to
the unsuccessful attempt to adjust myself to
automatic machines, the most perplexing and
baffling experience of my existence. The desire
somehow to free education from stifling ritual,
formalism and institutionalism was probably

[xiv]

FOREWORD

born in those frantic hours spent over books
which mystified and confused my mind. I had
already earned my way in the world from the
age of nine, had learned the ship-building trade,
had participated in strikes, and somehow none
of the learning I was asked to do seemed to
bear even the remotest relation to my experi-
ence. Out of this confusion worse confounded
(confounded confusion, some one has called it)
grew the hope that some day education might
be brought out of college halls and into the
lives of the people who do the work of the
world. Later I came to see that these very
people who perform productive tasks were
themselves creating the experience out of which
education might emerge. .

In 1920 I visited Denmark, not primarily
to study education but to pick up lost ancestral
threads — a quest which arose from my dislo-

[xv]

FOREWORD

cated youth. Here I came into contact with a
civilization which, by sheer contrast with hate-
ridden Europe, seemed like a cultural oasis in
the desert of nationalism. Whereas the vic-
torious nations were grasping for territory,
Danish statesmen were conducting a scientific
study to determine how much of Schleswig-
Holstein might be regarded as being integral to
Denmark. All of it was within their reach, for
Germany was incapable of making effective pro-
test even through the doubtful means of plebis-
cites; they, the Danes, wanted not what over-
heated nationalism might have demanded but
merely what scientific research could validate.
And then I saw farmers studying in peoples'
colleges (Volkshochschulen), studying for the
purposes of making life more interesting; these
same farmers were members of comprehensive
cooperative enterprises — dairies, creameries,

[xvi]

FOREWORD

cheese-factories, egg-shipping associations,
slaughtering-plants, banks, stores, insurance so-
cieties, et cetera — enterprises which performed
so many economic functions that the farmers
were freed for other activities; and there could
be found neither wealth nor poverty in the
land.1 Here, it seemed to me, was a culture
which included many of the attributes which
have been desired since the time of the early
Greeks; besides, it was founded upon rigorous
science and a degree of economic freedom — both
of which were absent in Greek culture.

Beneath the easily-recognizable distinctions
in Danish life — collective economic organiza-
tion, interest in literature, art and recreation,
absence of imperialism, et cetera — one finds an
educational ferment such as motivates no other
people in the modern world. Since the days of
Grundtvig, which were also the days of Den-

[xvii]

FOREWORD

mark's material and spiritual impotence, Danish
adults have striven to close "the yawning abyss
between life and enlightenment." 'What the
enemy has taken from us by force from without,
we must regain by education from within," they
said and forthwith laid the foundations for a
system of education which continues so long as
life lasts. Adult education, one begins to learn
after prolonged observation, has not merely
changed citizens from illiteracy to literacy; it
has rebuilt the total structure of life's values.

Can adult education do as much for us? Our
situation is, obviously, out of range of com-
parison: we are a large nation in area and in
population; we possess no homogeneous cul-
ture; and we have already become wealthy.
In addition, we have become habituated to a
method of achievement which is in essence an-
tithetical to intelligence. We measure results

[xviii]

FOREWORD

quantitatively. We could have an adult edu-
cation movement in America almost overnight;
advertising psychologists and super-salesmen
could "put it over" for us for a cash consider-
ation. But, what gets "put over" never stays
"put." The chief danger which confronts adult
education lies in the possibility that we may
"Americanize" it before we understand its
meaning.

I have therefore chosen the theme: The
Meaning of Adult Education. The topic is,
obviously, preliminary. We shall discover our
meanings when we are engaged in the process of
adult education, not in advance. My treat-
ment of the theme is also partial since I have,
following the advice of Walt Whitman, "let
myself go free." The material which composes
this essay has been brewing for years but it has
been formulated within a short space of time —

[xix]

FOREWORD

short, that is, for one who is accustomed to aim
at accuracy of statement. It goes forth, not
primarily to explain and convince, but to chal-
lenge. I trust that proper credit has been given
to those whose thought has stimulated mine.

■&*

"Greystone"
High Bridge,
New Jersey.
August, 1926.

M

FOR THOSE WHO NEED TO BE
LEARNERS

"We need, then, to reintegrate, to synthesize, to
bind up together the different forces and influences
in our national life. We need a greater courage : seri-
ousness, a greater courage in self-knowledge, a greater
unity; and changes in the machinery of our education
which leave our religious and political life in their
existing incoherence, or even add to it, will not serve
our purpose."

— A. E. ZlMMERN.

"The principle we wish to establish is that the
important thing in this connection is an increased
demand on the part of all kinds of people for educa-
tional facilities, which may roughly be termed non-
vocational, since they are concerned really with
restoring balance to a man who has, of necessity,
developed to a great extent one or other of his. charac-
teristics for the purposes of his livelihood or for
the satisfaction of his reasonable desires."

— Albert Mansbridoe.

FOR THOSE WHO NEED TO BE
LEARNERS

Education conceived as preparation for life
locks the learning process within a vicious
circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas
and taught to think of learning as a process
which ends when real life begins will make no
better use of intelligence than the elders who
prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious mo-
ments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly,
but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too
great; in the end young people fit into the
pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders
— indeed, become elderly-minded before their
time. Education within the vicious circle be-
comes not a joyous enterprise but rather some-
thing to be endured because it leads to a satis-
fying end. But there can be no genuine joy
in the end if means are irritating, painful.

[3]

ADULT EDUCATION

Generally therefore those who have "com-
pleted" a standardized regimen of education
promptly turn their faces in the opposite direc-
tion. Humor, but more of pathos lurks in the
caricature of the college graduate standing in
cap and gown, diploma in hand, shouting:
"Educated, b'gosh!" Henceforth, while de-
voting himself to life, he will think of education
as a necessary annoyance for succeeding youths.
For him, this life for which he has suffered the
affliction of learning will come to be a series of
dull, uninteresting, degrading capitulations to
the. stereotyped pattern of his "set." Within
a single decade he will be out of touch with the
world of intelligence, or what is worse, he will
still be using the intellectual coins of his col-
lege days ; he will find difficulty in reading seri-
ous books; he will have become inured to the
jargon of his particular profession and will af-

[4]

THOSE WHO NEED TO BE LEARNERS

feet derision for all "highbrows"; he will, in
short, have become a typical adult who holds
the bag of education — the game of learning
having long since slipped by him.

Obviously, extension of the quantity of edu-
cational facilities cannot break the circle.
Once the belief was current that if only educa-
tion were free to all intelligence would become
the proper tool for managing the affairs of the
world. We have gone even further and have
made certain levels of education compulsory.
But the result has been disappointing; we have
succeeded merely in formalizing, mechanizing,
educational processes. The spirit and meaning
of education cannot be enhanced by addition,
by the easy method of giving the same dose to
more individuals. If learning is to be revivi-
fied, quickened so as to become once more an
adventure, we shall have need of new concepts,

[5]

ADULT EDUCATION

new motives, new methods; we shall need to
experiment with the qualitative aspects of edu-
cation.

A fresh hope is astir. From many quarters
comes the call to a new kind of education with
its initial assumption affirming that education is
life — not a mere preparation for an unknown
kind of future living. Consequently all static
concepts of education which relegate the learn-
ing process to the period of youth are aban-
doned. The whole of life is learning, there-
fore education can have no endings. This new
venture is called adult education — not because
it is confined to adults but because adulthood,
maturity, defines its limits. The concept is in-
clusive. The fact that manual workers of Great
Britain and farmers of Denmark have con-
ducted the initial experiments which now in-
spire us does not imply that adult education is

[6]

THOSE WHO NEED TO BE LEARNERS

designed solely for these classes. No one, prob-
ably, needs adult education so much as the col-
lege graduate for it is he who makes the most
doubtful assumptions concerning the function
of learning.

Secondly, education conceived as a process
coterminous with life revolves about non-voca*
tional ideals. In this world of specialists every
one will of necessity learn to do his work, and
if education of any variety can assist in this and
in the further end of helping the worker to see
the meaning of his labor, it will be education of
a high order. But adult education more ac-
curately defined begins where vocational edu-
cation leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning
into the whole of life. Workers, those who
perform essential services, will naturally dis-
cover more values in continuing education than
will those for whom all knowledge is merely

[7]

ADULT EDUCATION

decorative or conversational. The possibilities
of enriching the activities of labor itself grow
less for all workers who manipulate automatic
machines. If the good life, the life interfused
with meaning and with joy, is to come to these,
opportunities for expressing more of the total
personality than is called forth by machines
will be needed. Their lives will be quickened
into creative activities in proportion as they
learn to make fruitful use of leisure.

Thirdly, the approach to adult education will
be via the route of situations, not subjects.
Our academic system has grown in reverse or-
der: subjects and teachers constitute the start-
ing-point, students are secondary. In conven-
tional education the student is required to ad-
just himself to an established curriculum; in
adult education the curriculum is built around
the student's needs and interests. Every adult

[8]

THOSE WHO NEED TO BE LEARNERS

person finds himself in specific situations with
respect to his work, his recreation, his family-
life, his community-life, et cetera — situations
which call for adjustments. Adult education
begins at this point. Subject-matter is brought
into the situation, is put to work, when needed.
Texts and teachers play a new and secondary
role in this type of education; they must give
way to the primary importance of the learner.
(Indeed, as we shall see later, the teacher of
adults becomes also a learner.) The situation-
approach to education means that the learning
process is at the outset given a setting of reality.
Intelligence performs its function in relation
to actualities, not abstractions.

In the fourth place, the resource of highest
value in adult education is the learner's experi-
ence. If education is life, then life is also edu-
cation. Too much of learning consists of vicari-

[9]

ADULT EDUCATION

ous substitution of some one else's experience
and knowledge. Psychology is teaching us,
however, that we learn what we do, and that
therefore all genuine education will keep doing
and thinking together. Life becomes rational,
meaningful, as we learn to be intelligent about
the things we do and the things that happen to
us. If we lived sensibly, we should all discover
that the attractions of experiences increase as
we grow older. Correspondingly, we should
find cumulative joys in searching out the rea-
sonable meaning of the events in which we play
parts. In teaching children it may be necessary
to anticipate objective experience by uses of
imagination but adult experience is already
there waiting to be appropriated. Experience
is the adult learner's living textbook.

Authoritative teaching, examinations which
preclude original thinking, rigid pedagogical

[10]

THOSE WHO NEED TO BE LEARNERS

formulae — all of these have no place in adult
education. "Friends educating each other,"
says Yeaxlee,1 and perhaps Walt Whitman saw
accurately with his fervent democratic vision
what the new educational experiment implied
when he wrote: "learn from the simple — teach
the wise." Small groups of aspiring adults
who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigor-
ous; who begin to learn by confronting perti-
nent situations; who dig down into the reser-
voirs of their experience before resorting to texts
and secondary facts; who are led in the discus-
sion by teachers who are also searchers after
wisdom and not oracles : this constitutes the set-
ting for adult education, the modern quest for
life's meaning.

But where does one search for life's meaning?
If adult education is not to fall into the pitfalls
which have vulgarized public education, caution

in]

ADULT EDUCATION

must be exercised in striving for answers to this
query. For example, once the assumption is
made that human nature is uniform, common
and static — that all human beings will find
meaning in identical goals, ends or aims — the
standardizing process begins: teachers are
trained according to orthodox and regulated
methods; they teach prescribed subjects to large
classes of children who must all pass the same
examination ; in short, if we accept the standard
of uniformity, it follows that we expect, e.g.,
mathematics, to mean as much to one student as
to another. Teaching methods which proceed
from this assumption must necessarily become
autocratic; if we assume that all values and
meanings apply equally to all persons, we may
then justify ourselves in using a forcing-method
of teaching. On the other hand, if we take for
granted that human nature is varied, changing

[12]

THOSE WHO NEED TO BE LEARNERS

and fluid, we will know that life's meanings
are conditioned by the individual. We will
then entertain a new respect for personality.

Since the individual personality is not before
us we are driven to generalization. In what
areas do most people appear to find life's mean-
ing? We have only one pragmatic guide:
meaning must reside in the things for which
people strive, the goals which they set for them-
selves, their wants, needs, desires and wishes.
Even here our criterion is applicable only to
those whose lives are already dedicated to as-
pirations and ambitions which belong to the
higher levels of human achievement. The
adult able to break the habits of slovenly men-
tality and willing to devote himself seriously to
study when study no longer holds forth the lure
of pecuniary gain is, one must admit, a per-
sonality in whom many negative aims and de-

[13]

ADULT EDUCATION

sires have already been eliminated. Under
examination, and viewed from the standpoint
of adult education, such personalities seem to
want among other things, intelligence, power,
self-expression, freedom, creativity, apprecia-
tion, enjoyment, fellowship. Or, stated in
terms of the Greek ideal, they are searchers
after the good life. They want to count for
something; they want their experiences to be
vivid and meaningful ; they want their talents
to be utilized; they want to know beauty and
joy; and they want all of these realizations of
their total personalities to be shared in com-
munities of fellowship. Briefly they want to
improve themselves; this is their realistic and
primary aim. But they want also to change
the social order so that vital personalities will
be creating a new environment in which their
aspirations may be properly expressed.

[hi

n

TO THOSE WHO HAVE FAITH IN
INTELLIGENCE

"Thinking cannot be the function of an exclusive
caste, still less a function which can be inherited. . • .
The first task of intelligence is the establishment of a
civilized standard of life."

— C. Delisle Burns.

"The most important scientific question of to-day
is one that is philosophical: namely, the validity of
Science itself as a means of interpreting experience
and of acquiring knowledge in respect of what we call
the world about us."

— F. G. Crookshank.

"For reason is experimental intelligence, conceived
after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of
social arts; it has something to do. . . . Intelligence
is not something possessed once for all. It is in con-
stant process of forming, and its retention requires
constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-
minded will to learn and courage in readjustment."

— John Dewey.

TO THOSE WHO HAVE FAITH IN
INTELLIGENCE

Psychologists have not yet told us what
intelligence is nor how it operates. In fact
those psychologists who lay claim to superior
wisdom insist that the intellectual process —
thinking — has very little to do with the actual-
ities of life. Real adjustment, they affirm,
takes place on motor levels; what we are pleased
to call thinking is merely a human apology, i.e.,
a way of rationalizing conduct. Thinking
furnishes no energy for acting but merely uses
left-over energies for purposes of justifying
actions.

We cannot stop here to engage in the current
controversy. Before taking sides, it will prob-
ably be advisable to view this conflict (which
may turn out to be intellectual in character)

[17]

ADULT EDUCATION

with perspective. Fashions come and go in
scientific as well as in religious dogmas. At
least it seems true that intelligence must hence-
forth take its place with emotion, impulse and
neuro-muscular activity — not superior to but co-
ordinate with these other drives and controls of
behavior. Reason has not been dethroned but
rather democratized. Conduct is best suited to
the purposes of the organism which proceeds
from harmonious synthesis (integration) of
mental, emotional, instinctive and motor levels.
Rational conduct is not predominantly intel-
lectual; rather it is conduct in which reason or
thought plays a proper part. And rational con-
duct, no matter what certain psychologists say,
is still the goal of both civilized and so-called
uncivilized people. Thought is somehow mixed
with action and although we can no longer lay
claim to superior capacities for thinking, we are

[18]

FAITH IN INTELLIGENCE

not likely to abandon the attempt to understand
its nature and function. "Man is unwilling to
remain in ignorance of the motives of his own
conduct," writes Unamuno, the great dis-
truster of reason. The more rational of us may
add : he will never be satisfied to leave off try-
ing to understand the meaning of his conduct to
himself, to his environment, to society and to
the universe.

If then "intelligence has something to do,"
what can its function be? More precisely, in
the interests of what purposes may adults be in-
duced to increase their intelligence? The ad-
vantages of skill — proficiency in doing some-
thing— are obvious. We must adjust ourselves
with respect to some aspect of skill or be elimi-
nated from the lists of effective persons in the
modern world. The utilities of information —
accumulation and retention of facts — are like-

[19]

ADULT EDUCATION

wise apparent. And the bulk of our conven-
tional education consists of a pursuit for knowh
edge: a way of comparing facts and noting their
relevancy within categories. (Intelligence in-
cludes these various aspects of learning, but per-
forms an additional function.) Intelligence is
reasonable: seeks out the logic of events; is ob-
jective: seeks the factual reality which lies back
of appearances; is critical: views isolated facts
and phenomena in relation to milieux: presses
facts to the level of relation to other relevant
facts; is tentative: arrives at conclusions which
are easily revised. These are all significant
functions and combine to designate a human
being of desirable qualities. To intelligence,
however, belongs another and transcendant
service.

An intelligent person sees facts, not merely in
relation to each other but in relation to him-

[20]

FAITH IN INTELLIGENCE

self. Indeed, one of the first marks of intelli-
gence is to recognize that "mental views of the
real are aspects of reality." Intelligence then
becomes a way of appropriating facts — a way
of integrating facts with the total aspects of
personality. Only the educated specialist
naively sees facts as discreet, objective and ex-
ternal units of experience. He speaks of the
"laws of nature" as if man's mind were not
somehow mixed with the formulation of those
laws. Facts, objectively discovered and de-
scribed in so far as language and mathematical
symbols will permit, are empirically important
but not nearly so important in an ultimate sense
as the method of their discovery and man's dis-
position of them in the affairs of the world.
From the place where the capitalist stands, pri-
vate ownership of property and the tools of
production appears to be conducive to the high-

[21]

ADULT EDUCATION

est human welfare; to the rationalizing capital-
ist, acquisition and ownership, and welfare are
the pertinent factors of this equation; taken
together all three constitute another significant
fact. But many persons who are not capitalists
reverse this formula ; looking out upon the scene
from another point of view (i.e., as another or-
ganism or personality in a partially different
environment) these people see the capitalist and
his idea-system as inimical to the highest human
welfare. Intelligence steps in with the aim of
seeing as many relevant facts as can possibly be
revealed; its first discovery will be that both
the capitalist and the anti-capitalist have fil-
tered facts through the meshes of their personal-
ities and that consequently they have in reality
created two new sets of facts. The most sig-
nificant aspect of this knowledge is its relation
to the interests and values of the respective per-

[22]

FAITH IN INTELLIGENCE

sons. Again intelligence enters, not to dis-
credit one or the other person but to seek a
method for validating the involved interests.
Briefly, one of the functions of intelligence —
its critical mission — is to give full recognition
to the personal equation in all fact-finding and
fact-using.

Intelligence is, moreover, experimental. Not
all of man's behavior consists of immediate re-
sponses to specific stimuli. Our significant acts
are those which we "stop to think" about.
Whatever concept we may utilize for describ-
ing the nature of stimulus, it still remains true
that completed responses may be postponed.
When we deliberate about two or more courses
of action we are interrupting the stimulus, de-
laying the total response. However short the
interval between stimulus and response, here
is intellect's opportunity. Intelligence cannot

[231

ADULT EDUCATION

force the organism to do something outside its
capacity but it can — either by means of past
experience or projected experience — test conse-
quences. It cannot wholly determine action,
nor can it foreordain results but it can bring
both to the level of awareness or consciousness.
The person who knows what he is doing has
taken the first step toward intelligent behavior.
The person who knows what he wants to do
and vhy is intelligent. But he cannot learn
the how and the why of conduct by rules and
precepts and other persons' experiences ; he must
experiment on his own behalf. Intelligence is
goodness in the sense that one cannot purpose-
fully or positively experience the good unless
conscious experimentation in the realm of
values accompanies activity. Habitual good-
ness lacks dynamic qualities — is in fact not
goodness in any real or living sense. Our habits

[24]

FAITH IN INTELLIGENCE

can aid us in remaining alive in a changing
world but only intelligence can furnish the
means for progressive adjustments. Intelli-
gence is not merely the capacity which enables
us to profit by experience ; it is the function of
personality which gives experience its past, pres-
ent and future meaning. Habits belong to ex-
istence, intelligence to living. Life becomes a
creative venture in proportion to the amount
and quality of intelligence which accompanies
conduct.

Psychologically speaking, intelligence is the
ability to learn, the capacity to solve problems,
to utilize knowledge in evolving, continuing
accommodations to changing environments.
Intelligent persons are teachable, adaptable.
Since life is growth — continuous change — and
since environments are never static, new situa-
tions are forever arising, and each new situa-

ADULT EDUCATION

tion confronted makes fresh demands upon in-
telligence. Knowledge and fact are relative to
situations. Consequently growing personali-
ties are conditioned by evolving intellectual
capacities. We can conceive of a static intelli-
gence only in terms of the paradox of static
organisms. Education is the process and ex-
perience is the means for achieving evolutionary
intelligence. The end is life transfused with
meaning.

That the quantity and the quality of intelli-
gence or ability to learn varies with individuals
goes without saying. This does not imply, how-
ever, that education should be limited to those
who happen to possess this capacity in terms of
preconceived and arbitrary norms. If we are
to make the most effective use of whatever
quantity of intelligence is available, we shall
need to grant the right of each personality to

[26]

FAITH IN INTELLIGENCE

rise to its own level. This means that increased
inventiveness will be required to discover the
kind of education which will most effectively
meet the needs of varying capacities. Formal
educational discipline cannot be accepted as the
criterion for ability to learn. The fact that over
half the children in our public schools stop at
the eighth grade and that only ten to twelve
per cent of those who enter high school complete
the course may constitute an indictment, not
against intelligence, but rather against the for-
malism of our educational system.

Adult education presents a challenge to static
concepts of intelligence, to the standardized
limitations of conventional education and to the
theory which restricts educational facilities to
an intellectual class. Apologists for the status
quo in education frequently assert that the great
majority of adults are not interested in learn-

[27]

ADULT EDUCATION

ing, are not motivated in the direction of con-
tinuing education; if they possessed these in-
centives, they would, naturally, take advantage
of the numerous free educational opportunities
provided by public agencies. This argument
begs the question and misconceives the problem.
We shall never know how many adults desire
intelligence regarding themselves and the world
in which they live until education once more
escapes the patterns of conformity. Adult edu-
cation is an attempt to discover a new method
and create a new incentive for learning; its
implications are qualitative, not quantitative.
Adult learners are precisely those whose intel-
lectual aspirations are least likely to be aroused
by the rigid, uncompromising requirements of
authoritative, conventionalized institutions, of
learning.

[28]

m

WITH RESPECT TO THE USE OF
POWER

"We can have power only over ourselves. . . .
This kind of power, power-with, is what democracy
should mean in politics or industry, but as we have
not taken the means to get a genuine power, pseudo-
power has leapt into the saddle."

— M. P. FOLLETT.

"Obviously the appeal to force can only show who
is strong, not who is wrong."

— M. C. Otto.

WITH RESPECT TO THE USE OF
POWER

"Knowledge and human power," said
Francis Bacon, "are synonymous, since the
ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect."
Man feels himself propelled, motivated, con-
trolled by forces external to himself. When
the mood of pessimism overtakes him he comes
to believe that the ultimate meaning of life is
restricted to these involuntary effects which con-
stitute his behavior and which proceed from un-
known causes. But never "in our dejection do
we sink" beyond the sight of hope; melancholia
is temporary. Human nature is predisposed to
optimism. We never wholly abandon the strug-
gle to become what Disraeli thought us to be;
namely, the "instruments who create circum-
stances."

Science, curiously enough, furnishes grounds

[31]

ADULT EDUCATION

for both our expectations and illusions. Scien-
tific discoveries present cumulative evidence of
our dependence upon inexorable natural laws,
but it is likewise the scientist who teaches us
that "the earth yields; step by step death itself
gives ground; and shall we think of the stars
only to fear them and to read our fate in
them?" 8 Indeed, Western Civilization has
become so far imbued with scientific elation
that we all tend to agree with Singer in defin-
ing progress as "the measure of man's coopera-
tion with man in the conquest of nature." 4
Our world is dynamic precisely because of this
faith in man's capacity to direct his destiny.
And, we still believe with Bacon that the
power which gives man this assurance within
the order of nature is his capacity for knowl-
edge. We obey his injunction "to begin to
form an acquaintance with things" with the

[32]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

accompanying confidence that our knowledge
of will lead to control over the objects of
our environment. Our achievements have
been prodigious. We can, by taking thought,
change into man's servants forces once inim-
ical to his welfare; we can equip the white
man for life in the tropics although it is
not "natural" that he should live there; we
can design machines which do the work of men ;
we are able to shrink distances and defy time;
in short, we can by the applications of science
alter, transform the natural environment. Hu-
man beings exercise power over nature.

Limits to this exercise of power are obvious.
Man succeeds in accommodating himself and
his purposes to the order of nature by means of
adjustments to and with, not against natural
processes. Human nature is itself a part of
the order of nature and cannot escape its

[33]

ADULT EDUCATION

naturalness. We are free and independent
only insofar as freedom and independence are
aspects of organic activity in a changing en-
vironment. The power which we exert over
natural forces is germane, not external to
nature's domain. We build false hopes when,
as Bukharin says, we enter the "confusion
between the feeling of independence, and real
objective independence.5 Nevertheless, our
power over nature, such as it is, has been
achieved by intellectual processes. Scientific
method is a discovery, if not an invention, of
man's mind. Moreover, this power which
utilizes natural forces has come to be also the
most potent manipulator of our lives. Inhabi-
tants of the modern world must somehow effect
an adjustment between the knowledge of na-
ture (science) and their thinking. We are all
subject to this power; we should all also so far

[34]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

as possible understand its significance. The
hiatus between a life dominated increasingly
by science and a life rationalized in terms of
unscientific or anti-scientific thought represents
one of the most appalling deficiencies of our
civilization. The remedy does not lie in simply
adding more scientific subjects to school cur-
ricula. Only by sustained continuous intel-
lectual effort can we keep abreast of our science
and its ensuing power over our lives. If we
stop for ever so brief a time, dynamic science
will leap ahead of our comprehension. Adult
education presumes, then, to serve as one of the
means by which the mind may be kept fresh
for the assimilation of that knowledge which is
synonymous with power.

The urge to power is a many-faceted motiva-
tion for our behavior. We desire power over
nature and, alas, many of us also strive for

[35]

ADULT EDUCATION

power over other human beings. Indeed, dur-
ing the rise of capitalism power over natural
resources and forces has frequently been ap-
propriated solely as a means for accumulating
wealth; and wealth is, for us at least, the
symbol of power over others. The "Great
Society" has come to be a vast net-work of
power-groups, each vying with the other for
supremacy. Nationalism and imperialism are
merely outward manifestations of this "pseudo-
power" which degrades us all; beneath these
more glamorous units lies the pervading
economic structure of our civilization based
upon a doubtful competitive ethic and
avowedly designed to benefit the crafty, the
strong and the truculent. Industrial organiza-
tion evolves steadily into a complex of sepa-
ratist groups — financiers, employers, stock-
holders, workers, consumers — each of which

[36]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

learns in time to conceive of its interests in
terms of ultimate opposition to the interests of
the others. The system can operate only under
the dispensation of discontinuous truces. War-
fare is the rule of the game.

Nothing positive results from mere shifts of
power; this is the lesson which labor move-
ments need to learn. If half the time devoted
to revolutionary propaganda could be directed
toward refining the aspirations of workers, a
real transformation would sooner or later take
place. Premature workers' control may, in-
deed, do nothing more than accentuate old
evils: the desire to do unto others what they
have been accustomed to do unto us is an in-
variable by-product of sudden power-ex-
changes. If workers bring into industrial con-
trol nothing better in the way of a philosophy
of power than the present concept of capital-

[37]

ADULT EDUCATION

ists and employers, the net gain will be zero.
We stand in need of a revolution of the mind
— not a mere exchange of power-groups — be-
fore an economic revolution can transform in-
dustry into a cooperative enterprise, before
"power over9 is transposed into "power with*9
in industry. Labor will inject a new and cre-
ative element into the control of economic
forces when workers are actuated by cleaner
motives, sharper intellectual insights and finer
wills. In the meantime, labor's future strat-
egy will, without doubt, depart gradually from
its struggle-technique, that is, from the irra-
tional method of attempting to prove who is
wrong by demonstrating who is strong. The
trade union of the future will be a creating,
not merely a fighting, organization. This im-
plies, obviously, a transformation of trade
union habits, habits which are now so deeply

[38]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

imbedded in the behavior-patterns of the older
leaders that they will find it difficult if not
impossible to make the adjustment. Workers'
education, already the most vital sector of
the adult education movement, forecasts a
new phase of industrial readjustment: the
displacement of the use of force by the use
of intelligence. Through the process will come
new accessions of power for the worker, but if
his education results in real intelligence as dis-
tinguished from mere mental cunning, it will
be power which leads to new concurrences and
integrations, not to the renewal of old frictions.
Labor will come into its own when workers dis-
cover better motives for production and finer
meanings for life.

We desire, if we are normal human beings,
power over our environments, over the mech-
anized forces which surround us, over the fac-

[39]

ADULT EDUCATION

tors which control our labors: power, that is,
over the external objects and energies with
respect to which our significant conduct is con-
ditioned. We refuse to acknowledge ourselves
"creatures of circumstances" ; if there is for us
a potential area of choice, we mean to find it.
And so we go forth with our scientific tools and
technologies to conquer nature, to develop ever-
increasing resources of power. Likewise, some
set forth to learn the methods for conquering
people, confident also that power vested in
themselves will validate the assumption that
men shape events. Success in both spheres is
ours: man with his little but restless brain has
transfigured the face of the earth and dictators
now rule in seven nations. We are capable of
developing sufficient intelligence to secure at
least partial control over things and we know

[40]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

how to govern people by coercion. But we
have thus far failed completely in devising in-
telligent procedures for socializing power. We
still stumble along in the sphere of human
relations with no guide other than the worn-
out, discredited, cruel presumption that power
is achieved by victory over another person or
group : that my advantage must mean your dis-
ability; that efficacy for me can exist only
through your disqualification.

No human being can safely be trusted with
power until he has learned how to exercise
power over himself. We are slowly coming to
see that all "power-grabbers" and dictators
who reach out for unusual power are in reality
compensating for inner deficiencies of their
personalities. To wish for power is thoroughly
normal; to want power in order to make my-

[41]

ADULT EDUCATION

self great while you are made small is ab-
normal. Again a problem, the solution of
which depends upon an extension of intelli-
gence, confronts us — one that cannot be trans-
ferred to the younger generation. Children do
not, it is true, inherit dispositions to power over
others; they acquire this urge by watching their
elders. They could, by proper educational
stimulus, be conditioned for more wholesome
social relationships. But the momentous and
necessary adjustment which all children must
soon or late attack is accommodation to the
adult world with its complex of habits, cus-
toms, mores and traditions. If these compul-
sions of the adult process are too rigid, no
genuine adjustment can take place, only capitu-
lation and compromise. Youth, fluid, generous
and adventurous, attempting to adapt its life
to adulthood which is rigid, competitive and

[42]

WITH RESPECT TO USE OF POWER

contemptuous — this is the perfect equation, the
quotient of which is endless and useless con-
flicts, subterfuge and dishonesty. Somehow we
must learn to cleanse the dreams of old men so
that the visions seen by young men will not
turn into bitterness. "Whoso neglects learning
in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the
future" and Euripides might have added:
whoso neglects learning in old age contami-
nates the present.

Adults who once more venture forth on the
pathway of learning will do well to give atten-
tion to Bacon's advice ; knowledge is surely one
of the chief aspects of power. And, he who
would be at home in the modern world will
need to "form an acquaintance with things."
If, however, he is content to remain on this
level, he will fall short of the genuine power
which is wisdom. To find the clew for educa-

[43]

ADULT EDUCATION

tional effort which includes knowledge of the
self he will need to go beyond Bacon, perhaps
to the Greeks. "Know thyself taught Socra-
tes. "Learning is ever in the freshness of its
youth, even for the old," said iEschylus.

[44]

IV

IN VIEW OF THE NEED FOR
SELF-EXPRESSION

'O to be self-balanced for contingencies."

— Walt Whitman.

"For in both the life of man and the life of nature,
individuality remains the irreducible surd."

—Horace Kallbn.

IN VIEW OF THE NEED
FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

Intelligence is consciousness in action-
behavior with a purpose. The person who is
vividly aware of his activity as well as the goal
toward which the activity is directed becomes
conscious of both his powers and limitations.
We evaluate a personality by two generalized
questions : What constitutes the validity of his
goals? And, is his behavior effective with re-
spect to his chosen goals or ends? If we dis-
approve of his ends, we will naturally condemn
both his ends and means. On the Other hand,
if we sanction his ends but suspect his means,
we will regard him as a deficient personality
but capable of being educated. Vocational
education is designed to equip students with the
proper means for arriving at their selected

[47]

ADULT EDUCATION

goals. Adult education goes beyond the means
and demands new sanctions, new vindications
of ends.

In the previous chapter we have dealt with
power — one of the ends or goals for which peo-
ple strive. Power itself, that is, directive
energy, is not to be condemned but we need to
ask pertinent questions regarding the manner
of its use. Power-over, even when exercised
by the most benevolent of despots, invariably
debases both those who command and those
who obey. Any force, in fact, which by its
function deprives those concerned from partici-
pation and choice belittles and degrades their
personalities. The king, dictator, employer or
teacher who does things for others which they
might have accomplished for themselves there-
by weakens the capacity and worth of citizens,
workers and students. Personality has func-

[48]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

tions which, if not brought into action, dis-
integrate. A functional personality is hence
one which realizes its powers, that is, somehow
gets itself expressed. Therefore only those
selves which have been self -discovered can get
realized, expressed. Knowledge of the self
discloses what the self is capable of expressing.
In the modern world of specialism only a
small sector of personality is set into motion
through vocational activities. We all tend to
become specialists — which means that we all
tend to become fractional personalities. This
involves not merely an immediate loss to our-
selves— a shrinking of our personalities — but
in addition is a great loss to the world since
we cannot have broad and generous societies
composed of narrow and limited citizens.
Educators, aware of the responsibility of the
school to the child's evolving self, have pro-

[49]

ADULT EDUCATION

posed innumerable experiments for encourag-
ing self-expression on the part of beginning
pupils. Some schools — still too few in number
— base their entire approach to the education of
the child upon methods of discovering latent
interests, urges to self-expression. These ex-
perimental efforts are to be encouraged.
Nevertheless, the child reared in an educational
atmosphere of self-expression will be rudely
shocked to find that he has somehow to make
his way in a community which regards self-
expression as an aspect of abnormality — a com-
munity which asks for but one of the functions
of the multiple self. Again we see that a so-
ciety of articulate selves will never be created
by youth ; the task belongs to those adults who
still retain sufficient courage to refuse social
representation on the basis of fragmentary
personality.

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

Adults who make bold to revive the once
vivid interests of their total personalities will
need to submit themselves to a process of
reeducation. Their habit-systems will resist;
the vocational organization in which they labor
will continue its demand for specialized, par-
tial functions; they will need to be motivated
by ends which are either exterior or in opposi-
tion to the incentives which lead to pecuniary
success. The whole of these environmental
resistances tends to tempt the organism toward
conformity; why go through the bothersome
toil of reeducating my habits if the present
ones serve to keep me alive, well-fed, well-
clothed and well-housed? Most Americans
will probably find no satisfactory answer to
this argument so long as our unique prosperity
endures. The eye of the needle is forever small
for those tempted into self-indulgence by

[5»]

ADULT EDUCATION

wealth. Some, however, are coming to believe
with William James that "the squalid cash in-
terpretation put on the word success is our
national disease." They also look upon some
of our absurd educational assumptions as
symptoms of this same illness: we could not
have developed such barren maturity, such lack
of intellectual interest in adults, had we not
first of all misconceived our goals. ". . . if
life is to be lived not only, but won to excel-
lency," we shall do well to listen to these few
who point out to us the impossibility of build-
ing a wholesome society out of partially
starved personalities.

What then are intelligent personalities to
express, give forth*? First of all: individuality,
uniqueness, difference. Personality is in es-
sence a synthesis of the bodily and mental
functions acting in relation to environment.

[52]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

Such synthesis can never be the same in two
organisms. Individuality is the qualitative re-
lation between elements of personality. We
live and move in a social environment but we
have our being within the organic unity of par-
ticularized selves. Difference is the base of
personal integrity. Only the unintelligent fear
what differs from themselves. We should, if
we were bravely intelligent, beg individuals to
give us their difference, not their sameness.
Nothing exciting can happen in a world of uni-
formities and homogeneities. Divergence is
the factor which induces a life of succeeding
contingencies — a life, that is, in which indi-
vidual conduct is of import.6

Communities on the road toward intelligence
recognize "that creation comes from the impact
of diversities" T but thus far the privileges of
freely expressing individual difference have

[53]

ADULT EDUCATION

been restricted mainly to artists and the ex-
tremely wealthy. The latter are exempted from
the monotonies, not because society expects
them to develop productive gifts, but merely
because our inverted standards make wealth
and privilege synonymous. Artists justify
their freedom by their works. Great art is
always an expression of a released personality.
And, life is not the least of arts. Persons in
fiction or life called "characters" are those who
have frankly expressed their singular traits —
those who have resisted the pattern of con-
formity. In this sense we can achieve char-
acter solely by expressing what is peculiar to
ourselves. Many persons attain this level of
zestful living by virtue of native gifts; others
need to fortify themselves against conventional
routine through the exercise of intelligence.
We lose our timidity and gain the courage of

[54]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

self in proportion to our knowledge of what life
is about. Adults who have learned to respect
those values which can arise through individual
expression alone already live in the land where
life's meaning may be discovered.

Personalities, conscious of their powers and
appreciative of their individualities, will in-
evitably feel the urge to participate in public
affairs; they will wish for some share in creat-
ing the environment which furnishes the stimu-
lating background for their lives. Mere feel*
ing of difference may lead to idiosyncrasy; dif-
ferences which do not get themselves realized in
action may readily become negative regrets and
frustrations. Once we lose the sense of active,
directive participation in affairs, we sink to
the level of inaction, or what is worse, silent
opposition. Politics and industry, for example,
provide unusual opportunities for self-expres-

[55}

ADULT EDUCATION

sion to those who have the power to manipulate.
The citizen, however, progressively loses in-
terest in government, and the worker grows
apathetic over the efficiency of industry because
each in his sphere feels that governing and man-
aging make no use of his personal gifts.
Merely voting, that is, counting each personal-
ity as one, does not, as Miss Follett8 has
demonstrated, reach to the bottom of the diffi-
culty. We have, indeed, become weary of be-
ing counted; we want to count for something.
If we are to create opportunities which will
call forth contributory personalities, small be-
ginnings in the realm of the manageable will
bring more rapid progress than attempts at re-
forming such vast and unwieldy units as indus-
try and the state. Each of us is capable of
bringing intelligent influence to bear some-
where— in home, neighborhood, community,

[56]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

trade union, cooperative society, trade associa-
tion, et cetera. Adult education specifically
aims to train individuals for a more fruitful
participation in those smaller collective units
which do so much to mold significant experi-
ence. All education worthy of the name aspires
to become art rather than skill, and adult edu-
cation is devoted to the task of training individ-
uals in "the art of transmuting . . . experi-
ence into influence' ' ; 9 the adult learner becomes
"a spokesman for ideas" — ideas which repre-
sent his personality and which constitute his
peculiar contribution to life. We need, then,
to be educated for self-expression because in-
dividuality is the most precious gift we have to
bring to the world — and further, because the
personal self can never be adequately repre-
sented by proxy. Personality becomes dynamic
in terms of intelligent self-expression.

[57]

ADULT EDUCATION

One of the aspects of diversity in human be-
ings which conventional education too fre-
quently overlooks is the variety of recreational
or enjoyable experiences. Recreation, like most
other elements in modern life, tends to become
stereotyped, standardized. We are all sup-
posed to enjoy baseball; and if we are college
students, football and dancing; if club mem-
bers, auction bridge or golf; et cetera, et cetera.
The hours of play, alas, come to be also com-
pelling hours. But, this is a denial of the very
essence of play. Necessity may lead us to
capitulate to machine-industry with its conse-
quent limitations of movement and self-ex-
pression, but what compulsion exists to make
you pretend to enjoy the same pleasures which
fascinate me? Play is nothing but exercise if it
does not permit the free expression of personal
inclination, individual enjoyment. Recreation

[58]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

should above all else be movements of freedom,
response which call into play the total personal-
ity, activity of grace, release, gladness. Here,
if anywhere, individual choice must be supreme,
else even in play we learn to abandon personal
integrity and worth. Adult educators will be
alert to discover what activities give joy to par-
ticular students; they will be on the watch
to uncover temperamental hobbies, pursuits
which may seem ludicrous to others but which
to the doer bring peculiar satisfactions. Indeed,
adult education will have justified itself if it
does nothing more than make adults happier in
their hours of leisure. Grown-up moderns are
pathetic precisely because they know how to
achieve everything save pure delight for its own
sake. Even in games, the end — victory — and
not the process is dominant. When my thought
is upon adult education memory invariably re-

[59]

ADULT EDUCATION

calls the Danish farmer who spent his leisure
hours painting scenes of his farm and neighbor-
hood. One of the canvases — showing a typi-
cal Danish rural scene — which adorned his
modest home pleased me so much that I offered
to purchase it ; he not only refused the bargain
but severely reprimanded me for presuming to
place a pecuniary valuation upon the product
of his recreation. Necessity compelled him to
be a farmer but he had all his life dreamed of
expressing himself in art. He was a most effic-
ient farmer but farming did not bring into play
the whole of his personality. A young German
instructor in his local folk-school (school for
adults) had released in him this aspiration to
paint and had aided him toward skill; now at
the age of fifty he finds felicity in painting pic-
tures which express something of his personal-
ity— something which necessary work could

[60]

THE NEED FOR SELF-EXPRESSION

never have called forth. Even this activity did
not exhaust his individual resources: I recall
a memorable night spent in his home when the
topic of discussion was the poetry of Walt
Whitman — the American who knew how to
"let himself go free." He called our Walt
"the Danish farmer's poet" and shame taunts
me still when I think of all he found in Whit-
man's poems — all that had escaped me.

[61]

FOR THOSE WHO REQUIRE
FREEDOM

". . . and a man is free in whom all capacities for
activity and enjoyment flow out to the extent of their
strength. ... It has been assumed that freedom
means the absence of limitation, which is correct but
misleading; for it explains by a negative, and has
therefore led to the absurdities of individualism . • .
the value of freedom lies in the original impulse, and
not in the absence of an obstacle."

— C. Delisle Burns.

"Learning does not liberate men from superstition
when their souls are cowed or perplexed."

— George Santayana.

FOR THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

The times arc not attuned for a sympa-
thetic reception of ideas on freedom. If John
Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty were to be given
to the contemporary public for the first time, it
would surely fall upon barren ground. We
now think of power and freedom in Machiavel-
lian terms: we continue to talk about freedom
while we acquire power for its suppression.
And all because we have persistently miscon-
ceived the nature of liberty !

Our error may be traced in at least three di-
rections: (a) freedom was thought of in terms
of absence of control — a purely negative con-
cept; (b) freedom was associated with the
spurious theological doctrine of free will; (c)
all practical means for achieving freedom were

[65]

ADULT EDUCATION

vitiated by false separations of inseparable
unities — individual versus society, citizen ver-
sus state, will versus instinct, et cetera. We
have, in short, consistently sought to be free
from things which appeared as obstacles:
Rousseau sought liberation from civilization,
Jonathan Edwards strove to endow human na-
ture with a will which would free him from
all bodily and worldly compulsions, and John
Stuart Mill envisaged individuals freed from
the constraints of public opinion. The naivete
of these negative strivings for freedom are re-
vealed the moment we attempt to visualize an
individual cut off from the civilization of his
time, endowed with a will dissociated from his
body, and existing in a society which allows
only his opinions to count. We then begin to
see that human beings can never be free from
anything save in a most superficial sense; we

[66]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

cannot be parts of a natural universe, a civiliza-
tion and a society and at the same time also be
separated from these wholes of which we are
parts. There is no "One and the Many," —
merely many ones in the one. The doctrine of
freedom from is not merely static and negative;
it is also irrational and harmful. The per-
sonality on the way toward disintegration
strives to be free from realities; or, perhaps
it is more correct to say that the attempt to
escape realities is the first indication of a dis-
integrating personality. Only the insane com-
plete the process.

Human nature cannot violate nature. We
exist within a natural environment and all our
behavior is a response to, a function of, the
multitudinous stimuli which arise either within
or without our bodies and operate according
to natural laws which we dimly understand.

[67]

ADULT EDUCATION

Stimuli or causes are somehow related to re-
sponses or effects in us as well as in the universe
of which we are parts. We can therefore be
free only within the scheme of nature. Success-
ful human adjustment is never wholly to or
against nature, but always partially with; we
cannot be free from ourselves or the natural
objects which surround us, and consequently
the only freedom worth talking about is frco
dom-with.

The intelligent alone are free for only by
knowing what it is we can be free with> can we
find freedom at all. "Nothing," writes Arthur
Ponsonby, "is more pathetic than the confidence
with which humanity believes it can master vast
forces which are quite obviously beyond human
regulation." Nothing, perhaps, save the bru-
tality, waste and suffering which result because
man despairs of mastering the minute forces

[68]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

which arc obviously within his control. Man
is, fortunately or otherwise, equipped with a
so-called higher brain center, the cortex, which
enables him, unlike other animals, to react to
his environment with a certain degree of choice
or freedom; he is less dependent upon instinc-
tive responses. "It is the function of the cor-
tex which enables man to indulge in reflective
thought, and so acquire his great ascendancy
over the animals." 10 Higher mental processes
emerge by virtue of the cortical functions of
association, correlation and integration. Vol-
untary conduct is, then, not an inversion of
natural processes but rather a new combination
of factors. The manner in which these new
emergents of behavior arise has been explained
by Lloyd Morgan,11 John Dewey," Edwin
Holt,18 M. P. Follett,14 R. G. Gordon li and
others and need not be further elaborated here.

[69]

ADULT EDUCATION

For present purposes it is sufficient to know that
an area of relative freedom of thought-action
exists for man and that the hypothesis upon
which this assumption rests is of supreme im-
portance to education.

We are free in proportion to the number of
things we can create (not de novo out of noth-
ing) or invent b)T utilizing what we already
have. We do not discard old patterns of be-
havior in favor of new: we combine old ones
with the result that new patterns emerge. Thus
inventions on the physical or mechanical level
are always recombinations of existing elements.
And we now know by better means than mere
analogy that the process of intellectual integra-
tion is similar. Freedom is an achievement, not
a gift. We do not acquire freedom — we grow
into freedom. Alas, many of us are still wist-
ful, disappointed seekers. "He was always,"

[70]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

writes Walter Pater, of Watteau, "a seeker
after something in the world that is there in
no satisfying measure, or not at all." And,
many of us still go groping about in the vain
hope that freedom may be found or bought by
some political or legal expedient.

The first step toward liberation is taken when
an individual begins to understand what in-
hibits, frustrates, subjugates him. We learn to
be free when we know what we desire freedom
for and what stands in the way of our desire.
Psycho-therapy has taught us that the first look
must be within, not without. Most of the bar-
riers to freedom have been self-constructed,
self-induced. We already know, empirically
at least, that many of our desires and wishes
are validated and many obstacles dissolved by
means of bringing our submerged conflicts to
the level of consciousness. In one sense, free-

t7i]

ADULT EDUCATION

dom is conscious conduct. The psycho-thera-
peutic specialist does not "cure" his patient; he
merely assists the patient in learning the
methods of self-recovery. And the method is
self-knowledge.

In another sense we become free when we
discover the limitations and extent of our
capacities. Much of the discontent among
adults is due to fruitless striving after im-
practical or impossible objectives. We set
Utopian goals, impossible targets, and then
sink into thralldom because our Utopias never
arrive and our shots all miss the mark.
We suffer the bitterness of impotency because
we have all along striven for an ideal beyond
our capacities. On the other hand, if we take
life as it is and begin our experimentations in
behavior in terms of possible and manageable
ideals, we will always be conscious of growth

[72]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

and renewal. We can save ourselves from fur-
tive fantasy only by keeping our aims within
the area of the real and the possible. Not that
all adults should begin their reeducation by
submitting to intelligence tests, forthwith to
order their future lives on the basis of their
limitations — a process patently stultifying and
inimical to growth. On the contrary, the im-
plication is that "one change always leaves a
babbitting on which another can be built" —
that we increase our capacities by means of
achievements which are now possible. Limits
of freedom are reached only when we have ex-
hausted all of the possibilities within grasp of
growing capacities. "Every important satisfac-
tion of an old want creates a new one," says
Dewey,1* and so every attainment in the order-
ing of our conscious conduct gives rise to new
possibilities.

[73]

ADULT EDUCATION

Attention to the sources of freedom which lie
within human personality should not close our
eyes to the fact that many of the forces which
enslave us are environmental. In a static en-
vironment, individuals cannot change in the
direction of freedom. We want freedom be-
cause we believe it will increase our happiness
but sooner or later we are sure to discover that
individuals cannot be free in a feudal society.
We need continuing education in order to learn
awareness of ourselves as behaving organisms
but we also need more knowledge concerning
those external factors of which our behavior is
a constant function. The aim should be, not to
teach adult students that, e.g., a subject called
economics exists and needs to be studied but
rather that there are economic factors in his
total situations and that he must somehow come
to know how to deal with these if his total

[74]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

■i i

situations are to emerge as progressive se-
quences of living. The old debate over en-
vironment versus heredity (or organism) has
lost its meaning now that we have come to see
that organism-environment are two interacting
parts of a unified equation. We can progress
not by giving attention to either organism or
environment, but to both and in relation to each
other. Propaganda organizations will of
course make use of adult education as a means
to achieve their preconceived environmental
ends — which, unhappily, will lead to further
illusions concerning education. The doctrinaire
revolutionist who sees the problem of freedom
in terms of a binding environment and an en-
slaving social and economic order will naturally
seek education as a force to release him and his
fellow-believers; he will, indeed, construct a
faith in the possibility of altering his entire life

X75]

ADULT EDUCATION

after the revolution which changes the social
order. This point of view is easily condemned
on theoretic grounds, but even educators ought
not to lose sight of the fact that revolutions
are occasionally necessary. We may, for ex-
ample, so far exaggerate the incentives and mo-
tives which are derived from capitalism and
profit-production as to cause the entire educa-
tional system to become a direct response to this
system and to lead to its further emphasis. At
present the majority of college graduates in the
United States probably leave college with in-
creased rather than with diminished profit mo-
tives. At any rate, they do very little either as
critics or experimenters to create new motives.
If this system, both on its economic and educa-
tional sides, becomes too rigid and too oppres-
sive and incapable of sincere self-criticism,
nothing short of violent revolution will suffice

[76]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

to change its direction. But if adults approach
education with the end-in-view that their new
knowledge is to be the instrument of a probable
future revolution, they will almost certainly
defeat the very purposes of learning. Revolu-
tions are essential only when the true learning
process has broken down, failed. We revolt
when we can no longer think or when we are
assured that thinking has lost its efficacy.
Revolution is the last resort of a society which
has lost faith in intelligence.

The egotist is slave to his own limitations;
the freedom which he verbally affirms is in
essence an artificial separation of himself from
others. "I listened for the echo," says Nietz-
sche's Disappointed One, "and I heard only
praise." Why disappointed? Because self-
praise feeds upon- itself, is absurd since it has
no reliable reference and leads to void. The

[77]

ADULT EDUCATION

sense of freedom arrives when we become suffi-
ciently intelligent to face both ourselves and
our environments critically, that is, with the
feeling that both may be projected as evolu-
tions. Freedom is a creative relatedness be-
tween personality and the manageable aspects
of the universe. Since nothing possesses mean-
ing save in relation to something else, it fol-
lows that freedom becomes significant when
viewed in relation to its proper references. To
be free from bondage is preliminary; dynamic
freedom stirs the personality in the direction
of radical, causative, originative activity. The
function of freedom is to create.

In summary, those individuals are free who
know their powers and capacities as well as
their limitations; who seek a way of life which
utilizes their total personalities; who aim to
alter their conduct in relation to a changing en-

[78]

THOSE WHO REQUIRE FREEDOM

vironment in which they arc conscious of being
active agents. Each of these components of
freedom is dependent upon a degree of intelli-
gence and is realizable in terms of education.
Both the amount of intelligence and learning
essential for free self-expression varies with in-
dividuals. Freedom can never be absolute.
None of us is self-determined. Self is relative
to other selves and to the inclusive environ-
ment. We live in freedom when we are con-
scious of a degree of self-direction proportion-
ate to our capacities.

[79]

VI
FOR THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

'The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's,
Is — not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be — but, finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means;"

— Quoted by Harry Snell.

"Only if to each moment of life there is vividly
present the sense that it is a moment of creation, and
equally present a satisfaction in the vision of what
is to be created, can the moment be a joyous one."

— Edgar A. Singer.

FOR THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

Intelligence for power, power for self-
expression, and the self expressing its objec-
tives in a context of relative freedom: this is
the sequence which leads to creative living.
But, what are we to create? What is the mean-
ing of power, self-expression and freedom with
respect to the total complex of life? Each
of these aspects of progressive personalities
isolated and left standing by itself becomes a
symbol of abnormality : the over-intelligent be-
come intellectual at the expense of social use-
fulness; those who concentrate on self-expres-
sion for its own sake evolve toward egotism;
those who accumulate power without full recog-
nition of its social nature turn out to be dic-
tators and arbitrary masters who must have

[83]

ADULT EDUCATION

their slaves; and those who seek to make free-
dom an absolutist goal come ultimately to be
detached, baulked cynics.

Intelligence, power, self-expression and free-
dom come to have meaning only when we see
them as cooperating parts of a functioning
whole: the integrated personality. Only the
intelligent can have justifiable power; only
those conscious of power, inner resources, can
achieve adequate self-expression; and, in the
end, only the free can create. Consequently,
the adult learner who sets forth to educate him-
self in terms of any single objective will defeat
his ends. We do not, as learners, first secure
intelligence, next power, then self-expression,
and last freedom. On the contrary, we experi-
ence these aspects of personality as concur-
rences, as forces which flow into each other at
moments of creativity.

[84]

THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

Most normal youths feci at some time or
other during the untamed years a distinct urge
toward crcativeness. Which of us has not
brought his imaginary invention, poem, novel,
drama, painting to the red glow of half-realiza-
tion in some sublime moment of aspiration4?
And who from the plane of compelling matur-
ity has not looked backward with bitterness
upon the unrealized dream? In a poignant
dialogue between father and son at commence-
ment time, the elder speaks:

"Has college standardized you as it did
your father; has it stood you in a mold,
made conventional and neat and proper your
ideas of life; or has there come from some-
where some thought or hope of something
different, more true, more genuine, more joy-
ful, if you want to put it that way, than
what you and I and the alumni of all our

[85]

ADULT EDUCATION

universities, for the most part, have come to
regard as the safe and sane norm of excel-
lence, a tailor-made pattern, all alike, and so
deadly dull that all life has departed from
it? . . . Forgive me. Your father, you see,
was momentarily living old days over again,
or what might have been old days had things
been otherwise. He is well along in years,
you know; his clothes fit well; he is not wor-
ried about the grocer's bill nor his insur-
ance payment; he has never been black-
balled at a club nor sneered at in the street,
nor driven out of town, nor tarred and
feathered or anything else exciting. He was
just wondering if he hadn't missed some-
thing." 1T
And, this is the tragedy of modern life: even
those who win the badge of what we call suc-
cess find themselves defeated at maturity; de-

[86]

THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

feated because their personalities have become
sterile, uncreative. To me nothing is more
pitiful than the frantic efforts of art-collecting
on the part of the aged rich — the mere urge to
collect being so patently a compensation for the
failure to create. The newly rich man who
purchased books by the yard for his expensive
new library and selected them on the basis of
the color of bindings represents the tragic ab-
surdity of an inverted culture.

Adult education presumes that the creative
spark may be kept alive throughout life, and
moreover, that it may be rekindled in those
adults who are willing to devote a portion of
their energies to the process of becoming intelli-
gent. Once more it becomes necessary to pro-
pose inclusive definitions : if life is learning and
learning is life, then creativeness is a possibility
in all spheres of activity to which significance

[87]

ADULT EDUCATION

is attached. The verb "to create" has too long
remained the private possession of those who
call themselves artists. Life is also one of the
creative arts, else its ultimate meaning is bore-
dom. A well-organized and adequately ex-
pressed life deserves to be called beautiful no
less than a well-conceived statue. Esthetics
suffers by reason of its artificial isolation, its ex-
clusiveness. Beauty is not discovered solely by
contemplation of beautiful objects; beauty is
experiencing. Indeed, passive contemplation
of beauty in objects or in terms of abstract con-
ceptions may, and often does, become a hin-
drance to the process of bringing forth active
participations in creative experiences. The
esthete invariably degenerates to the level of
impotency. He may perceive beauty but is
rarely capable of translating his perceptions in
terms of the whole of life. To him beauty is

[88]

THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

not merely an experience to be enjoyed but for-
ever remains a goddess to be worshiped.

Our Danish farmer who painted pictures of
genuine quality in his hours of leisure was in
addition an active participator in a creative so-
ciety. He was a member of some dozen or more
cooperative associations: social inventions
which performed economic services so effi-
ciently that much of his energy could be util-
ized in the pursuit of higher ends. Moreover,
he did not travel to Venice to paint the formal
beauties of St. Marks; he found his subjects on
his farmstead and in his neighborhood. Con-
sequently his indigenous art exerted a pro-
found influence upon his total life and the life
of his community as well. Between life and
art no artificial demarcation was erected and
all the cant about art and beauty which makes
the conversations of esthetes so superficial was

[89]

ADULT EDUCATION

absent. He talked less about art because he
lived artistically.

Whenever we are presented with the oppor-
tunity of bringing beauty out of ugliness,
harmony out of conflict, good-will out of ha-
tred, potency out of sterility, intelligence out of
ignorance, in short, whenever it becomes pos-
sible to add a new quality to experience, we
stand in the presence of creation. The mo-
ment may come unforeseen, and therefore we
ought always to face life in a creative mood.
We may be called on the morrow to a com-
mittee-meeting of our fellows to discuss prob-
lems of importance. If we enter the discussion
with our minds riveted to a preconceived con-
clusion, the creative spirit will depart from
our deliberations; we will come out as we
went in, unchanged and unaffected by what
might have been a lively cooperative ven-

[90]

THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

turc. On the next day an issue of state im-
pends; the formalists of politics have pre-
judged the case by stating its form in terms of
opposites, mutually-exclusive factors; if we
merely choose one or the other of these prear-
ranged solutions, we express merely the least
common denominator of our personalities, not
our best. Or, if we are trade unionists who
imagine that our best chances of success lie in
the use of force rather than in intelligence,
our efforts will lead to successive restatements
and reformulations of static situations. On
the other hand, if we faced every conflict in life
as an opportunity for creativeness, most of the
drabness, futility and wastefulness of human
intercourse could be transmuted into exciting
adventures.

We have already learned in part that we
must allow those who wish to be called spe-

[91]

ADULT EDUCATION

cialists in art a degree of freedom which is not
common to all. By their ensuing creativeness,
artists and geniuses justify the liberties we per-
mit them. And, we shall eventually learn that
a similar sort of freedom must be granted to
those who wish to create new ways of life — new
industrial, social, economic, educational, inter-
national experiments. If living too is to be-
come one of the creative arts, we must discover
solvents for those hard partitions which sepa-
rate life into compartments. We cannot expect
youth to reform our rigid institutions if their
education proceeds from adult sources and their
personalities have to find expression in a con-
text of adult compulsions. The rigidities of
adulthood need loosening before anything
creative can happen in the sphere of social con-
trol. And we need not await the tide of num-
bers: a small group of adults in a single com-

[92]

THOSE WHO WOULD CREATE

munity seriously concerned about the values of
creative living is sufficient to alter the quality
of the total community process.

The creative mood is more than an attitude
of expectancy. Many persons approach adult-
hood with Micawber-like confidence in the com-
ing event, the glorious adventure which is
bound to happen to them, and cumulatively lose
capacity to achieve; their imaginative projec-
tions lead to such exaggerated introspections
and fantasies that they can compensate for
their failure to create only by further and more
extravagant conceits. In the end they either
reach absurd limits of ineffectiveness or drop
suddenly to the level of cynicism and despair.
Creativeness is always futuristic, anticipatory,
but its futurism emanates from the plane of
actuality; its "impossibles" are distillations
from "possibles." Creativeness is intrinsic and

[93]

ADULT EDUCATION

seems fortuitous merely because we fail to see
all of the relations between the creator and the
combining factors of his creation. Further,
creativeness is less dependent upon its ends than
its means; the creative process, not the created
object, is of supreme importance. We are not
all equipped by temperament, organic integra-
tion or environmental surroundings to produce
works of art but we can all live artistically.

[94]

vn

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

"Annette, who instinctively loved the light, had
sought for it where she could, in those university
studies which in her set were regarded as pretentious.
But the light she had found there had been much
filtered ; it was the light of lecture-rooms and libraries,
refracted, never direct."

— ROMAIN ROLLAND.

"Integrating art and life would mean so transform-
ing life that the purposes of art become the purposes
of life as well."

— Leo Stein.

"For art fixes those standards of enjoyment and
appreciation with which other things are compared;
it selects the objects of future desires; it stimulates
effort."

— John Dewey.

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

The classic tradition in art is one of the
many hurdles which adult learners must jump
before they can participate freely and creatively
in cultural enjoyments. Nothing so effectively
dampens the ardors of appreciation as to be told
by some formalist that the object being ap-
preciated is unworthy, in bad taste. The
proper retort is, of course, Whose taste? To
this the conventionalist can only reply, Mine
— which obviously answers nothing. Our men-
tor can thereupon refer us to the specimens
from which his standards are derived and if
he happens to be a professional teacher of art,
he will persist until we succumb to Philistinism
and pretend to enjoy what he enjoys. But
enjoyment is not simulation, reference to pat-

T97]

ADULT EDUCATION

terns and specimens, imitative worship; the
essence of enjoyment is critical appreciation.
And to appreciate is to assimilate, to appro-
priate, to make one's own. Appreciation is
creative, not passive. But one valid reference
for artistic standards exists, namely, the in-
dividual who appreciates, enjoys. Every at-
tempt to formulate collective norms must fail
by reason of individual variations. My enjoy-
ment can be your enjoyment only in terms of
superficial agreements; beneath these common
factors lies the uniqueness which is forever
yours or mine. Enjoyment can never be mu-
tual because those who enjoy are separate or-
ganisms living in differing relations of time
and space. Moreover, the function of enjoying
is derived from organic integrations which may
be similar but never identical. The foregoing
does not imply that enjoyments cannot be

[98]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

shared. Indeed, it may be justifiable to believe
that language, communication itself, arose out
of the compulsions to share enjoyments as well
as dangers. All of us, save the misanthropic
and the snobbish, feel the urge to accelerate
and intensify our enjoyments by social means,
but we succeed merely in stimulating others to
their enjoyment. In the search for apprecia-
tive and enjoyable experience each goes his way
alone. What is enjoyed registers itself ulti-
mately within a psycho-physical process which
is the foundation of individual personality.
The shareable portions are new social products
which may be called our enjoyments in the
sense that they are derivatives of discreet in-
dividual enjoyments.

Adult education, wherever it endures long
enough to pass through the "bread and butter"
stage, invariably evolves toward cultural ends.

[99]

ADULT EDUCATION

In Denmark, Germany and England the de-
velopment has been unmistakably in this di-
rection. Classes may begin with the study of
economic problems but before the learning
process has gone far the vague conscious-
ness that man does not live by bread alone be-
comes manifest; the demand that learning shall
point the way toward what is euphemistically
called the "higher life" is never wholly sub-
merged even among those over-serious persons
who wish to improve the world without being
conscious of the need of improvement in them-
selves. The relevancy of the above introduc-
tory paragraph and the present chapter is
drawn from this presumed and insistent claim
that education shall somehow lift us above
monotonous necessities into the realm of pure
enjoyments.

"Education is preparation for life." How

[100]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

grim and serious and final this sounds! At
commencement time life with all its weighty
problems is made to fall suddenly upon the
shoulders of the educated young. At last they
are equipped to face the hard and stubborn
world with a will to subdue it, to bring it to
terms, to make it yield success. Along the way,
contact has been made with a few so-called
humanistic or cultural ideas but these after all
were offered as decorative badges to be worn as
tokens of a "finished" education. Who, indeed,
can presume to call himself educated until he
can make the same stereotyped references to the
classics which his professor has prescribed?
Yes, we must have some "culture" to round out
the learning process; it may come in packets
neatly bound, easily digested, selected from the
best academic stocks, and guaranteed not to
interfere with the serious business of life, but

[101]

ADULT EDUCATION

we must at all costs pay our respects to the god-
dess of classicism. The question of enjoyment
does not enter the equation of this officialized
culture — the problem is to get every one in-
oculated whether he likes it or not. Courage-
ously reversing this process, the leadership of
adult education will be able to bring forth
new cultural values: instead of indoctrinating
students with a preconceived standard of what
constitutes good music, painting, literature et
cetera, it will begin by discovering what in-
dividuals genuinely enjoy. And, if reeducated
adults happen to enjoy something which the
academicians frown upon, there will be no
apologies. Adult education might by such can-
did means give American art a new impetus;
it could at any rate aid greatly in the much-
needed procedure of transforming a growing
artistic snobbery info an indigenous folk-ex-

[102]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

pression. We can never attain artistic emi-
nence so long as our artists are obliged to secure
their training, their inspiration and their stand-
ards of appreciation in Europe. , On the other
hand, our artists can never find a congenial and
stimulating environment for their work in this
country so long as appreciation remains the in-
herited prerogative of a coterie of so-called cul-
tured people. In short, adult education may
justly be expected to do something toward
democratizing art.

At first glance it appears, especially to those
who are executively-minded, that "the ideal
aim of intelligence seems to be the rational con-
trol of human life." 18 But adults who realize
their educational deficiencies are apt to become
too earnest in their search for rationality. In
their determination to run down the reasons for
things they are too frequently tempted to

[103]

ADULT EDUCATION

abandon the joy of things. After all, we ought
not to exalt reason unduly: it was undoubtedly
the last of our faculties to arrive in the fitful
march of evolution, and our feelings are prob-
ably still as fundamental as our thoughts.
Feelings, sentiments and emotions lie very close
to the center of organic function and are regu-
lative in a degree which makes thinking seem
to be still an uncertain experiment. But it is
useless to discuss feelings and emotions as if
these were aspects of personality separable from
thinking and reasoning. In the present state
of our development these are already interde-
pendent functions and it seems highly probable
that evolution is now proceeding, not by creat-
ing new organs, but by further integrations of
existing organs and functions. It is therefore
to be expected that as personalities, that is,
partially integrated unities, we shall need to

[104]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

anticipate our greatest enjoyments, not as pure
emotion, but as emotion interpenetrated with
intelligence. Conversely, if adult education is
to save itself from degenerating into another
type of intellectualism, it will teach people how
to make their thinking glow with the warmth of
honest feeling. When driven to definitions
modern critics invariably end by giving art to
the emotive or affective phase of personality
and science and logic to the reflective or rational
— thus hoping to evade the real issue; this ob-
viously relegates art to the realm of sheer acci-
dent. The alternative assumption seems to be,
at least from the viewpoint of education, that
emotions and intelligence are continuous and
varying aspects of a single process and that the
finest emotions are those which shine through
intelligence, and the finest intelligence that
which is reflected in the light of its appropriate

[105]

ADULT EDUCATION

feeling. "I prefer to feel rather than under-
stand," writes Anatole France in that exquisite
letter to M. Charles Maurice, and then pro-
ceeds to elaborate his understanding. But we
cannot feel and then understand ; feelings may
predominate over intelligence but they cannot
annihilate it; likewise, to understand anything
always partakes somewhat of "getting the feel"
of its properties and qualities. Feeling adds
warmth to understanding and understanding
gives meaning to feelings.

Adult educators may well take as their guide
in the realm of appreciation the words of
Whitehead: "What we want is to draw out
habits of aesthetic apprehension. . . . The
habit of art is the habit of enjoying vivid
values." 19 "How to bring this sense of order
and beauty into the lives of the ordinary men
and women of our countrv" 20 constitutes one of

[106]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

the central tasks of adult education. But we
must learn to draw out as well as "bring in"
the sense of beauty since the latter process in-
evitably runs the risk of reducing apprecia-
tion to passive rather than creative en-
joyment. We get a more intense feeling of
beauty and more valid meanings when the
''sense of beauty" is an accompaniment of some
activity. Games, dancing, and the drama may,
when not professionalized, furnish the best op-
portunities for bringing forth values which are
susceptible of vivid enjoyment. The highest
aesthetic values are probably not those which
somehow get themselves registered in books,
paintings, statues, but rather those which are
realized in motion, in participating activity.

Teachers of adult classes who are called to
serve in the interest of evoking aesthetic ap-
preciations will be sorely tempted to increase

[107]

ADULT EDUCATION

"that already large amount of ineffectual striv-
ing for aesthetic conformity" which restrains
art from fulfilling its true mission in life.
"What then is the function of the serious critics
of art and letters, and how do they differ from
the tub-thumper, be he more or less refined?
Their function is, I imagine, to cooperate with
other teaching powers in the development of
active intelligence. It is to analyze, explain
and illustrate, so that choice may be made
relevant to need." 2l And, one might add, so
that choice may be made relevant to growth
and capacity. No one knows his aesthetic needs
until he is well along the road of aesthetic ex-
perience. Appreciation is not merely a way of
finding values; it is also a way of discovering, !
creating values. Art is essentially a form of
mental release ; its inception may lie in feelings
but its result to the personality is "intellectual

[108] •

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

enrichment." Artistic experience is imme-
diately enjoyed but also leaves its residue of
"enjoyed meanings," to use Dewey's term."
And a meaning is always a fermentation which,
because of its potential relatedness to other
meanings opens the way toward successive en-
joyments and enlarged meanings. Their eyes
closed to the uses of beauty in IKe by their pre-
occupation with the problem of the nature of
beauty, tired critics frequently leave the im-
pression that art is an ingenious futility. "En-
tire freedom from enthusiasm was looked upon
as almost equivalent to culture and ripe scholar-
ship," writes Brandes of the second empire,"
and one surmises that this "second empire" of
pedantry becomes the ultimate haven of many
professional critics. But appreciation lacks en-
joyable content and becomes a new kind of un-
warranted specialism — a specialism in un-

[109]

ADULT EDUCATION

related sophistication — whenever critical atti-
tudes eliminate spontaneity and eagerness.
Adult education can at least aid in delivering
us from that abject fear of expressing our quick
and enthusiastic enjoyments — the fear to which
we have become habituated under the discipline
of professional criticism. There are people who
do not know whether they think the play which
they have seen is "good" or "bad" until their
favorite critic has delivered himself of his
oracular judgment in the press the following
day. To them, nothing can ever be spontane-
ously enjoyable — save in a post-mortem con-
versational sense.

Among intelligent adults an "art-spirit"
which can come only through candid and culti-
vated appreciation is needed. Such a spirit at
work among people would inevitably find ex-
pression in collective ideals and aspirations.

[no]

TO THOSE WHO APPRECIATE

Goldenweiser," speaking of the offices of art in
primitive societies, explains in part how art be-
came integrated with life: "The attractiveness
and suggestiveness of these symbols, their,
simultaneous presentation to a large number of
devotees, the ease with which multifarious as-
sociations are absorbed by these objects, only to
be reawakened and refreshed in the minds of
the beholder, transform the symbolic art object
into a veritable perpetuator of a large part of
the culture of a tribe, that part of the culture,
moreover, which is emotionally most valuable
as well as most clearly representative of the
collective ideas of the group." Here we see
clearly what is meant by an art-spirit or art-
impulse at work in a society. But this is an
account of how art became a carrier and intensi-
fier of culture before division of labor sent
modern civilizations along new paths of de-

Tin]

ADULT EDUCATION

velopment; the spontaneous flow of art-im-
pulses, which apparently animated pre-civiliza-
tion societies, has now to make its way as a
competitor among many powerful alternatives.
Adult education, it is to be hoped, will re-
vivify this spirit and thereby extend and give
new meanings to the values inherent in ap-
preciation. Certainly, art can never be a lib-
erating force in a society which automatically
restricts its cultivation to those who have leisure
by virtue of their private wealth. Art, its ap-
preciation and enjoyment, belongs to those who
have or are capable of having, "intrinsic sensi-
bility" and the highest function of adult educa-
tion may well be the discovery and release of
these qualities of sensibility among the many.

[112]

vm

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

''Effective knowledge is professionalized knowledge,
supported by a restricted acquaintance with useful sub-
jects subservient to it. . . .

"This situation has its dangers. It produces minds
in a groove. Each profession makes progress, but it
is progress in its own groove. . . .

"The dangers arising from this aspect of profes-
sionalism are great, particularly in our democratic
societies. The directive force of reason is weakened.
The leading intellects lack balance. They see this set
of circumstances, or that set: but not both sets to-
gether. The task of coordination is left to those who
lack either the force or the character to succeed in
some definite career. In short, the specialized func-
tions of the community are performed better and
more progressively, but the generalized direction lacks
vision. . . .

"The point is that the discoveries of the nineteenth
century were in the direction of professionalism, so
that we are left with no expansion of wisdom and
with greater need of it. . . . Wisdom is the fruit of
balanced development."

— A. N. Whitehead.

"I take it that what the particularist mainly needs
is a philosophy and general culture which shall en-
able him to see his own point of view in something
like its true relation to the whole of thought. It is
hard to believe, for example, that an economist who
also reads Plato or Emerson comprehendingly could
adhere to economic determinism."

— Charles Horton Cooley.

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

The evils of specialism have been duly noted
by college presidents, publicists and philoso-
phers— noticed, verbally proscribed and then
left to multiply. Here stands a real dilemma :
the division of knowledge goes speedily on with
infinity as its goal whereas man's comprehend-
ing capacity is distinctly limited. Moreover,
knowledge can be expanded only by the method
of specialism: when one science or branch of
science becomes too complex for complete com-
prehension by a single mind, its problems must
be sub-divided, delimited; succeeding scientists
concentrate upon a fraction of the total subject-
matter and attain success by means of this very
concentration upon particularized objects and
processes. Generalization may set new prob-
lems but specialism alone discovers new facts.

The moment curricula became responsive to

ADULT EDUCATION

research as distinguished from scholasticism,
colleges and universities became subject to the
rule of specialization. College presidents who
entered the field of education when science was
still the intruder and not the controller may
remonstrate against specialism as vociferously
as they please; faculties will subdivide under
their noses. They may go on visualizing the
Renaissance ideal of cultured professionalism,
but their graduates will continue to be circum-
scribed specialists who know a great deal about
one sphere of knowledge and not much about
anything else. Indeed, the phenomenal quan-
titative expansion of colleges and universities
during the past two decades may be regarded,
in part at least, as a direct response to special-
ization. Higher education, so-called, has come
to be predominantly a form of vocational train-
ing.

[118]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

Industry presents the same picture. Re-
formists may bemoan the fact that the modern
factory-worker sees merely a small portion of
the finished product and does not understand its
relationship to the whole. Ten years hence
he will see even a smaller portion. Mass pro-
duction can succeed only by eliminating so far
as possible all waste motion — an act which can
apparently be achieved only by subdividing
and simplifying the individual worker's task.
The man who now places a nut on a bolt and
gives six turns in passing may later give three
turns, and eventually one. Indeed, he may
come at last to be merely a tender of machines
which perform all other necessary manipulative
functions.

Development of less than a century of ap-
plied science has thrown government into veri-
table chaos. The older concept of the political

tii9]

ADULT EDUCATION

state is no longer tenable. The significant
problems which confront modern states are pri-
marily technical, not political, in character.
The British Parliament is asked to decide a
crucial question concerning coal mines: Can
the mines be managed under private ownership
and at the same time pay wages sufficient for a
decent standard of life, and if so, how? Here
is a question which involves technological in-
formation with respect to mining efficiency;
economic information as to foreign markets,
distribution, capitalization, et cetera; and so-
ciological factors relevant to a decent standard
of living. But this is precisely the sort of a
question with which a democratically-chosen
parliament is least able to deal. In fact, the
problem involved is given political reference,
not because it is political in character but be-
cause its consequences disturb the order and

[no]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

unity of the state. In a moment of crisis the
government of the United States began con-
struction of a gigantic hydro-electric plant in
one of the southern states. Congress has ever
since been debating the question of its disposal:
cast in the political mold, the problem became,
not what is the efficient course of action, but
how can this technical question be decided in
terms of party prestige and sectional advantage,
that is, how can a technical matter be made to
appear political.

Suggested escapes from the dilemma of spe-
cialism may be condensed into three general
propositions :

I. In academic education experiments pro-
ceed in three directions : 28

1. Required orientation or survey courses
which are designed to give the student a
broad and comprehensive acquaintance

[121]

ADULT EDUCATION

with world history, the evolution of
civilization, the growth of ideas, the
span of social and political progress, the
march of science, the requirements of
citizenship, et cetera.

2. Curriculum adjustments which provide
for a limited amount of specialization
within a context of broad fundamental
training.

3. Restriction of undergraduate study to so-
called liberal subjects and reserving in-
tensive specialization for post-graduates, i

Criticism: (a) Orientation courses are likely

to contribute to superficial knowledge of many ]

facts without understanding of their depth and j

I

significance. Such courses are chiefly useful in
aiding students to discover interests and dis-
positions, (b) Limited specialization does not
meet the demands of the present generation of

•r i
[122]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

college students; they want technical and
"practical" courses which can be put to use.
(c) Graduate study is still considered — per-
haps deservedly — to be a luxury suitable pos-
sibly for the person doomed to a life of scholar-
ship but not worthy of the man of action. The
weight of the above criticism falls directly upon
educational misconceptions, and chiefly upon
that misconception which regards education as
a reflex of industry. So long as our primary
standards of valuation are pecuniary, educa-
tional institutions will be able to make but
feeble resistances to specialism.

II. In industry escape is for the most part
sought in:

l. Trade Unionism, or collective struggles
for increased wages, decreased hours of
labor and improved conditions.

ADULT EDUCATION

2. Works' councils or various schemes for
coordinating the various specialized ele-
ments in the industry.

3. A wider participation in recreations and
amusements after working hours.

4. Psychic compensation in the form of al-
legiance to some Utopian scheme for re-
organizing the whole of economic life
and thereafter the incentives and satis-
factions of life itself.

Criticism: (a) Trade Unionism, insofar as
it does not get itself translated into new prac-
tices within industry, remains a fighting and
not a creating, educating force; so long as its j
aims are merely to get more or less of what its j
members already have, it will be a compensa- 1
tion for specialized labor, not a solution for its
inherent problems, (b) This criticism holds j

[124]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

true for the remaining three avenues of escape;
each of these methods leaves the individual
worker still a specialist whose daily tasks call
forth diminishing fractions of his personality.
(Industrial managers, technicians, bosses —
those whose work gives them a sense of being in
control — are caught in the same trap; they are
perhaps less conscious of the disservices of spe-
cialism because of a wider range of sociable
and recreational opportunities in the commu-
nity.)

III. In government™ among the numerous
proposals to be considered, the most
significant are :
1. Commissions, boards and other extra- or
quasi- or semi-governmental bodies com-
posed of experts and frequently endowed
with judicial and executive powers but
usually restricted to advisory recom-

[125]

ADULT EDUCATION

mendations made either to the executive,
judicial or legislative branches of gov-
ernment. (Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, Tariff Commission, e.g.)

2. Employment of municipal managers,
technologists with engineering training,
who are vested with powers of decision
over technical issues — sometimes sharing
this authority with a small body of
elected commissioners or aldermen.

3. Wider use of technical experts by gov-
ernmental departments.

4. Restricting the decision of popular suf-
frage to the selection of persons and not
to choice between issues.

Criticism: As will be noted at once all of
these schemes tend to increase specialization
while they leave the citizen with diminished
functions. He, the citizen, is not to grow into

[126]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

fuller citizenship by these means; on the con-
trary, to be a citizen under the rule of experts
is to be restricted to giving a mild "yes" or an
emphatic "no" to some one else's decisions.
But this reduces citizenship to a false logical
base; questions which can be answered by yes
or no are seldom worth asking. When the
function of citizenship loses its creativeness it
also loses its meaning.

We are committed, it must be repeated, to
the process of division of labor, to specialism.
The problem resolves itself ultimately into the
query : How can society secure the highest scrv-.
ices of specialists? We may get a very efficient
service of experts in one of two ways: by sub-
ordinating them to the will of a dictator who
determines the ends for which they shall labor,
or by transferring executive powers to special-
ists themselves. In either case, we must be

[127]

ADULT EDUCATION

prepared to make corresponding sacrifices. Ad-
mittedly, more efficient results will be accom-
plished when power tends to become absolute
and centralized. But is this the highest service
we may expect of specialists? Power vested in
dictators and executive specialists means power
taken from the citizen. It may be that citizens
make poor use of power when they possess it,
but that consideration is for the moment irrel-
evant. When the sense of power is gone, what
incentives are left for the increase of knowl-
edge? The functions of citizenship, like all
functions, atrophy when not used.

Our choice is not limited to leaving the ex-
perts alone, subordinating them to dictators, or
placing them under the control of poorly in-
formed publics. But one hesitates to propose
alternatives. The signs are none too hopeful.
It may be that democracy reared on impossible

[128]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

metaphysical foundations must decay more or
less completely before we find our way with
science. Mussolini may be the true prophet of
our time: Liberalism, democracy and parlia-
mentary government may, as he so vehemently
affirms, have fulfilled their functions. At any
rate, the liberal has lost his effectiveness, parlia-
ments have ceased to function, or function
badly, and democracy is fast becoming a term
used to denote illusion. Yet, I do not regard
these as signals of despair; the fact that our
modern political, economic and social structures
and processes are disintegrating makes experi-
ment feasible. We have once more reached one
of those historical periods which seems like a
dead-end because the shell of old institutions
and habits, although crumbling, still possesses
sufficient resiliency to prevent the new from
bursting forth. In like periods of the past,

[129]

ADULT EDUCATION

thinkers with vision turned occasion to ac-
count by imagining and portraying perfect so-
cieties, Utopias. The function of Utopias is to
set activity toward new goals, to visualize the
consequences of changed conduct, to re-direct
ideals. We need not lose ourselves in fanciful,
legendary and unrealizable dreams but if we
do not utilize our present difficulties as oppor-
tunities for equally adventurous challenges to
the future, we shall deserve to be recorded a
generation of people who possessed many things
but lacked courage and vision for high ventures.
Possibilities for promising experiments lie
open in many directions but we must confine
our discussion to those which seem especially
pertinent to our present theme. In the first
place, experts and specialists whose functions
become external to the people whom they serve
have been ' miseducated. They have, in

[130]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

Cooky's ,T words, become "particularists," that
is, persons who behave as if "one phase of the
process" were "the source of all others." Con-
sequently the impact of their function, when
it includes educative contact (which is seldom),
is forever education in a false direction. The
specialist who becomes protagonist for a par-
ticularist point of view has already deserted the
spirit of science; he labors under the "illusion
of ccntrality" which keeps him and his disciples
from recognizing "that the life-process is an
evolving whole of mutually interacting parts,
any of which is effect as well as cause." Spe-
cialists can contribute to the increase of wisdom
(as distinguished from knowledge) by dealing
with parts in such manner that they become
useful in explaining wholes. Educational in-
stitutions can, of course, assist in this program
by acknowledging that one of the primary aims

[131]

ADULT EDUCATION

of learning is to induce an "organic view" of
life; they can discover how it happens that stu-
dents develop blind-spots — those negative
adaptations which pave the way for specialism.
But in the end specialists and experts must con-
duct experiments in the atmosphere of their
functions. It is one thing to hold an intellec-
tual conviction against particularism and quite
another to live organically — especially if liv-
ing means making one's way in competition
with other specialists. We shall secure the
highest services of experts when they learn to
integrate their functions with respect to specific
problems. Integration is not a verbal exercise
but a method by which active differences inter-
penetrate. Six medical specialists, each ex-
amining that portion of the organism upon
which he has specialized, will come away with
six varying explanations of cause and effect;

[132]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

their specialized knowledge can be fruitfully
integrated only when the six points of view are
focussed upon the organism as a whole.

Specialists can, then, help to save themselves
and us as well by integrating their functions.
But this is not enough. We, the objects of
specialists' attention, must somehow become
aware of what is being done to us and with us;
we must become active participants in the proc-
ess. At this point many thinkers abandon the
trail ; overwhelmed by the complexity of mod-
ern knowledge and the paucity of intelligence,
they fall back upon some externalism, some
easy division: government of the lesser minds
by the best, master and servant, commanders
and obeyers, executives and submissives, know-
ers and doers, et cetera. The problem, however,
will not be dismissed so readily: when our di-
vision seems fixed and secure in one sphere, flux

[133]

ADULT EDUCATION

breaks out in another. The only relatively
permanent method for "keeping people in their
places" is to vest power in hereditary castes.
Even then biological processes tend to defeat
our purposes. But there is another and simpler
approach. We capitulate to experts because we
attempt to understand too much, and failing
in this, we abandon the ways of intelligence
altogether. My conception of adult education
points toward a continuing process of evaluat-
ing'experiences, a method of awareness through
which we learn to become alert in the discovery
of meanings. Now the specialist enters the
equation of our lives when meanings have be-
come confused or lost; we stand baffled in the
face of an adjustment lacking courage for the
next step because we have no sure knowledge
of what it may mean to us. The expert cuts
the cord of uncertainty; he speaks as one hav-

[134]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

ing authority, and we, having transferred de-
cision to him, act upon his word and thereby
achieve the adjustment. But alas, this is
merely a superficial aspect of the true adjusting
process. When next we confront a similar diffi-
culty, another expert will need to be consulted;
in the end, if this were the essence of expert
service, life would become a chronic succession
of consultations in the presence of specialists.
The only meanings possible would be those pur-
chasable from experts. This is, however, pre-
cisely what any person with a grain of intel-
lectual self-respect will refuse to do — to take
his meanings second-hand. An adjustment
precipitates meanings when it facilitates future
adjustments, that is, when it is accompanied by
an intellectual process which becomes instru-
mental to the whole of intelligence. We con-
sult, for example, an oculist because we have '

[135]

ADULT EDUCATION

been annoyed by difficulties in reading. (The
sequence of adjustment: annoyance felt, diffi-
culty recognized, cause of difficulty discovered,
cause removed, difficulty lessened, annoyance
diminished.) We begin by contributing to his
technique since he could not diagnose the diffi-
culty properly without knowing what effects it
had produced. Insofar as our interpretation
corresponds with his external observation, we
are both engaged in discovery. Now, the ordi-
nary layman cannot be expected to know all
the intricacies of eye-structure and function but
here is one isolated feature which is of primary
interest to him at the moment. How much
of this can he comprehend? If he can under-
stand merely enough to be intelligent in carry-
ing out the oculist's instructions, the experience
will have been profitable. If he can understand
sufficient to experiment with his reading-habits,

[136]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

to sec some of the relations between cause and
effect and to seek improvement within this rela-
tion, he will have participated in a true educa-
tive experience. And if he can see further into
the relations between the use of his eyes and
his total bodily functions, he will begin to ex-
perience meanings — that is, be in a position to
gather the fruits of real learning. We can
utilize expert functions for educative purposes
if we begin by giving attention to those relevant
features which are within our capacities. When
we comprehend relevant portions, i.e., relevant
to our present interest, of what the expert is
doing, we are in position to become participants
in the expert's services.

In conclusion, opportunities for turning ex-
perience to account educationally will be multi-
plied if we delimit the area of our functions as
well as the size of our problems. Experience,

[137]

ADULT EDUCATION

the stuff out of which education is grown, is
after all a homely matter. The affairs of
home, neighborhood and local community are
vastly more important educationally than those
more distant events which seem so enchanting.
Experience is, first of all, doing something;
second, doing something that makes a differ-
ence; third, knowing what difference it makes.
Our personalities count for something, enjoy
experiences in proportion to the effectiveness
of our actions. Now it is all very wholesome
to join with world societies dedicated to bring
peace to mankind, but peace will come only
when individual human beings learn to act, to
behave in the direction of peace. Blessed is
the man whose talk bears a direct relation to
his acts. Otherwise, behavior and conversation
may become so far separated as to dissociate
aspects of personality. We can always talk

[138]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

glibly about problems, yes, even suggest the
only possible solution, when we are far enough
removed from the scene to allow our activities
to escape the consequences of our talk. We
can all be experts — a long way from home.
And somehow modern life tends to accelerate
our long-distance propensities. Each new in-
vention in the field of communication is at first
greeted as another, boon to human relations.
Does it not bring us closer together? And will
we not therefore learn to have more respect for
and good-will toward each other? This naive
manner of placing human relations upon the
quantity-contact basis probably stands in the
way of our making the best use of communica-
tion inventions. It undoubtedly causes us to
overlook the fact that highly-developed means
of communication are indispensable to highly-
centralized forms of social control. Some im-

[139]

ADULT EDUCATION

portant differences persisted in the various
regions of the United States before we all
read the same syndicated news, listened to the
same radio announcers, witnessed the same mo-
tion pictures, ate the same food, wore the same
clothes, et cetera. Rapid means of transporta-
tion and communication tend to standardize us
and therefore render us easier of control by
single authorities.

The life of simplicity is gone forever.
Telephones, radios, aeroplanes, automobiles as
well as specialists are integral to our industri-
alized civilization and we must work our way
through, not around, them. The present argu-
ment allows for as many conveniences and as
many experts as we can afford — and as many
as we can understand. Our personalities can
be redeemed if we insist upon a proper share in
the solution of problems which specifically con-

[140]

TO AN AGE OF SPECIALISM

cern us. This means giving more attention to
small groups; it means as much decentraliza-
tion, diversity and local autonomy as is con-
sistent with order. Indeed, we may well sacri-
fice order, if enforced externally, for valid dif-
ference. Our hopes flow from the simple con-
viction that diversity is more likely to make life
interesting than is conformity, and from the
further conviction that active participation in
interesting affairs furnishes proper stimulations
for intellectual growth. The chief disservice
for which specialism is accountable is external-
ism; specialists ask too little of us. And they
will ask still less in the future unless we supply
enough intelligence to bridge the gap between
experts and experience.

Ti4»]

IX

AS DYNAMIC FOR COLLECTIVE
ENTERPRISE

"The problem is not how to produce great men,
but how to produce great societies."

— A. N. Whitehead.

"Modern life is complicated by the fact that we
pursue our most vital interests not as individuals but
as members of organized groups. Questions of con-
duct, therefore, are apt to take the form not simply
of what is right or wrong for one of us to do, but of
what is best to do under circumstances that require co-
operation with others of our group or of other groups
who may not share our views. Our social ideals,
therefore — such ideals as godliness, patriotism, lib-
erty, charity, democracy — must get something more
than a vague mass acceptance. In the organized so-
ciety of to-day our movements are complex. The
'plot' of its collective life is dramatic: its action cen-
ters on the revaluating of these ideals — on applying
them to situations within which must be encompassed
an adjustment of various interests. To play their due
part these interests must first be understood, and to
be understood they must be allowed to speak for
themselves."

— A. D. Sheffield.

AS DYNAMIC FOR COLLECTIVE
ENTERPRISE

Emphasis has been placed in the foregoing
chapters upon education with respect to in-
dividual personalities. Education has been
viewed as a process which goes on within
psycho-physical organisms — organisms whose
objectives range from satisfaction of simple
physiological needs to intellectual curiosity
concerning the universe itself. Education is
behaving and behavior is a manifestation of
activity of a discreet organism. Again, educa-
tion is peculiarly a kind of behavior through
which organisms attempt to adjust themselves
to external or internal factors which, having
set up frictions, call for new adjustment.
Without the compulsions of struggle, learning

[145]

ADULT EDUCATION

could never have arisen as a means of adjust-
ment. Friction, strain, struggle, conflict, ten-
sion, stress : these are states or situations which
cannot endure since they are always accom-
panied by pain; consequently organisms strive
by every means within their capacity to find an
adjustment which will free them from painful
feelings. Most of the energy generated or
made potential by the metabolic process, save
that utilized in habitual, automatized behavior,
is consumed by these adjusting and readjusting
activities.

If, then, we want to know what education is
good for, we must ask : What kinds of adjust-
ments are being required of individuals'?
After we have determined the nature of impend-
ing adjustments we then need to inquire: In
what ways can education aid and accelerate the
adjusting process? Further refined, our ques-

[i46]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

tion becomes: What kinds of learning will lead
toward adjustments which in turn lead to
higher adjustments? Or, is our scheme of edu-
cation compatible with an evolutionary con-
cept of growing personalities?

We have already seen that evolving person-
alities follow the path of learning in an at-
tempt to adjust themselves to a world in which
knowledge leads to power, power leads to self-
expression, freedom and creativity, creative
freedom leads to enjoyable experience, and
finally, a world in which knowledge goes for-
ward under a discipline of specialization.
These considerations as stated converge to
emphasize individual aspects of education.
We now must recognize the fact that these
qualities which are enhanced by intellectual
effort become meaningful only when seen in
social contexts. Intelligence, like freedom, is

[147]

ADULT EDUCATION

relative, not merely to ignorance or to bondage,
but also to intelligence and freedom in other
human beings. Education proceeds by means
of communication, and all forms of communi-
cation are social products. Self-expression
takes on meaning in relation to other selves.
Behavior belongs to individuals but conduct is
social.

From many sources of social theory and
social practice comes the insistent appeal to
bring people together, to overcome individual-
ism. The call is gratuitous. People are being
brought together, willy-nilly. They have no
alternative. Every persistent need of the hu-
man organism is brought soon or late within
the area of collective means. Vital needs left
without the scope of collectivity, either as con-
trol or means, eventuate as incidences of unad-
justment. The individualist of modern life

[i48]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

not only finds his normal aspirations baulked
but he himself becomes an inhibition to the
enhancement of his own aims.

The potential needs of the human organism
are unlimited. Each need satisfied releases
energies which flow into channels of renewed
discontent; the new or unused energy disrupts
the harmony of life, or is dissipated. And, most
needs lie without the organism, — are environ-
mental. To meet the need is to confront
the environment — the socialized environment
of the modern world. Man does not "make
up his mind" to be social. He is caught
within a social milieu. He is social by virtue of
his enlarging needs. He cannot even select the
precise kind of sociality within whose circle he
must function to meet these needs.

Obnoxious as the view may be to all who
cling to intellectual predispositions of indi-

[H9]

ADULT EDUCATION

vidualism this is the realism with which mod-
ern man must come to terms. The tender-
minded patriot proclaims : There are no classes !
His orotund eloquence is soon modulated to
conform to the atmosphere of the committee-
room, where, if he succeeds in initiating ac-
tivity, he must deal with classes. The farmer
may not wish to belong to a class, but his collec-
tive activities are exempted by statues from
certain restraints imposed upon the collective
activities of business corporations. Coal miners
may not belong to a class but when the con-
glomerate of classes wants coal, the patriot
must deal with representatives of collectivist
coal miners. No logical squirmings or senti-
mental predilections can overcome the reality
of so much realism. Nor can the problem be
approached by subtle intellectual maneuvers.
Some people who cannot honestly evade the

[150]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

recognition of classes in the functional sense,
insist that their real objection is not to classes
but to class-consciousness. The distinction is
not without merit. It splits life into discreet
compartments and the particles may be more
easily manipulated than the whole. In sub-
stance the position of the intellectual individ-
ualist is dualistic; he says: Be a member of
your class if you must but see to it that your
mind does not find you out. Act collectively
but think individualistically. Join the trade
union but do not become a trade unionist.
Collectivism in function — individualism in
thought !

Modern psychology may be considerably
confused about many thirgs but on this point
it is both logically and empirically clear: "Be-
ware how you isolate thinking from doing."
The potential revolutions of the future are in-

[151]

ADULT EDUCATION

cipient in the current hiatus between thought
and activity. Thinking as a process of ration-
alizing— how this good word has suffered! —
activity in terms of reality must assume con-
temporaneous qualities. Activity in the
present with corresponding thought-evaluation
in the past represents man's persistent dilemma.
When thinking is unable to catch up with do-
ing, the results of the doing eventuate in man's
undoing. In a primary sense, modern collec-
tivism has its roots in science and industrial
technique whereas individualism has its origins
in historical, philosophical and religious tradi-
tions. The application of science to materials
in the effort to meet evolving human needs
leads inevitably to cumulative collectivism.
The material compulsion ris a tergo is to live
the collective life. On the psychological side
stands the equal compulsion to think the col-

[152]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

lective life. Bankers, manufacturers, mer-
chants, wage-earners, physicians, teachers,
farmers — all must pool their interests under
definite forms of collective action or suffer the
defeat of those interests. Collectivism is the
road to power, the predominant reality of mod-
ern life. To exercise that power without in-
tegration with the intellectual process is to
court social suicide. Collectivism in function
with a corresponding individualism in thought
produces a divided social structure, an uncon-
trollable social organization and a mystifying
social process.

How can education supply directive energy
for collective enterprises? The most concise
answer is threefold: (a) by revealing the na-
ture of the social process; (b) by transforming
the battle of interests from warfare into crea-
tive conflict; (c) by developing a method for

[153]

ADULT EDUCATION

social functions which will make the collective
life an educational experience. The first two
points will be briefly considered here and the
last forms the theme for our concluding
chapter.

The social process is essentially a "contact
between minds." 28 The "community of me
and you" represents the beginning of society.
Minds which interact remain forever functions
of separate organisms; the relations between
constitute social phenomena. There is no
super-mind, no group-mind, which is a summa-
tion of individual minds, but there are, as
Burns aptly states, "mind-groups," that is,
psychological resultants of the relation between
separate minds. Let us imagine four persons,
A, B, C and D, responding to each other with
A as the innovator or initiator of contact. B
then responds to A with the result that B's re-

[154]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

sponsc is b x a ; C now responds to (b x a) or
BA and his total response is c x (b x a) ; D's
response is d x [c x (b x a)], et cetera. We
see that each succeeding response carries with
it not merely additions of previous response
and stimuli but rather interpenetrated relations
between (indicated by the multiplication sign
x) foregoing relations. This process goes on in
all sorts of contact between persons and it at
once becomes apparent that the resulting rela-
tions will evolve as meanings or understandings
in proportion to the degree in which each re-
sponding person is intelligent about the quality
of his response and its direction. Many fric-
tions on the level of social relations arise from
the fact that we respond to others dishonestly
or unintelligently. Once we become aware of
the fact that our responses emerge as new rela-
tions which in turn become stimuli directing

[155]

ADULT EDUCATION

and influencing all future responses, we begin
to see how important it is to make our con-
tacts with others an intellectual concern.

Next we need to understand how it happens
that we get involved in groups, associations,
collectivities which formulate standards of be-
havior. We sooner or later come to feel that
we cannot always follow our desires and
wishes; we need to ask how our proposed act
will be evaluated by some group or groups to
which we have given allegiance. An individual
trade unionist may not wish to go on strike but
if his union has through its officials called a
strike, he will follow their orders, not his
wishes. A citizen may regard his nation's war
as an iniquity but when the government has
opened hostilities he too will be conscripted.
Situations of this sort are usually confronted
with ethical principles: what is the right or the

[156]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

wrong course of action? Pacifists will, for
example, decide the problem of war in advance
and on purely ethical grounds. The basic
moral principle of the pacifist — inviolability of
the individual conscience — assumes that in a
conflict between individual and group the
higher values lie with the individual. This
procedure, of course, prejudges the specific
issue : the pacifist, like all absolutists, comes into
situations, not with an open-minded desire for
facts, but with determination that however the
problem is solved his a priori solution is to
undergo no alteration. Consequently, few edu-
cational influences emerge from pacifist propa-
ganda; situations which can be met by the
simple process of applying a preconceived gen-
eral rule need not be dealt with intelligently.
In addition, these general rules which force
conduct into channels already marked out pre-

[157]

ADULT EDUCATION

vent even moralists from exercising a truly
moral influence; evolving, creative, intelligent
conduct flies out of the window when absolut-
ism enters the door. Infallibility and wisdom
hold nothing in common.

Ethics of the either-or variety falsify situa-
tions involving conflicts between individuals
and groups. Objectivity is lost the moment in-
dividual conduct is conceived as something
separable from social conduct. Values arise
out of the social process; what is called "con-
science" is merely a system of beliefs or fears
which epitomize socially derived valuations.
If we turn our attention to the functional
groupings which characterize modern life, we
begin to realize that social organizations are
means for achieving individual ends. We
merge our personalities with other personalities

[158]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

because we believe that our interests will
thereby be advanced. Society is a process, not
an end or goal — a process of interacting indi-
viduals. Collectivism is a representation of
individual interests.20 Groups will arise when-
ever two or more people identify a common in-
terest which to them seems worthy of perpetua-
tion or enhancement. And, conflicts between
groups will occur so long as interests are vari-
able. Education for collective life begins
when interests are intelligently scrutinized and
validified, and since interests vary continuously
in growing personalities, this validifying proc-
ess must continue so long as we regard our-
selves as functional beings. Modern life calls
for increasing varieties of adjustment to col-
lective techniques; if education cannot direct
collective enterprises into creative channels, we

T159]

ADULT EDUCATION

are doomed to a warfare between groups in
which unrelated power and ruthlessness remain
the only criteria of survival.

"We are born to struggle as the sparks fly
upward, but not necessarily to brutality and
waste." And, we are destined to prosecute our
interests collectively, but not necessarily by de-
feating or annihilating other groups. Nor can
we find our way in placid acquiescence, in
sacrifice of our interests. To overcome and to
be overcome are both negative procedures.
Sentimentality is often more mischievous than
savagery.

We need to be candid concerning our inter-
ests and candor implies willingness to submit
our claims to every conceivable test. Em-
ployers who offer wages less than they expect
to pay, trade unionists who ask for more than
they expect to get, politicians who represent

[160]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

private interests under the guise of public serv-
ice— these are falsifications of the social proc-
ess. How absurd to pretend that we can get
what we want by concealing what we want!
And, how tragic to reduce social relations to
the barren status of unscrupulous bargaining.
Our alternative is "open diplomacy" — the as-
sumption that what we want is worth wanting,
possesses sufficient integrity to stand compari-
son and is capable of making its way on merits
and not through coercion.

But honesty is not enough; it is easily con-
ceivable that conflict among honest people
might result in nothing more than unintegrated
righteousness. Religionists are often enough
honest in their convictions but the conflict im-
plies that factors which are now in opposition
are capable of synthesis. Diversity is eternal
but specific diversities rise to creative levels

[161]

ADULT EDUCATION

when they combine to produce new unities.
We need to learn, not merely to be frank, but
to make frankness articulate. Intelligent, ex-
plicit, unconfused presentation of difference
provides a setting for our interests from which
valid meanings may be expected.80 These are
requisites for creative conflict.

We are now on the threshold, equipped with
proper attitudes and dispositions but still in-
capable of transforming collective warfare into
creative conflict. Method is still lacking.
Like the scientist, we may foresee what research
and experiment may bring forth but until we
have developed a method for taking the next
step, our foreknowledge remains impotent.
The vast unused stores of energy which are
potential in collective enterprises will be re-
leased when we become intelligent enough to
discover ways of turning wasteful warfare into

[162]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

productive integrations. For, after all, conflict
is not in itself creative. It is merely prelimi-
nary to experiments which may or may not
emerge as creative resultants.

Social organization has long been a favorite
subject for speculation and generalization; the
present demand is for specific analysis. We
know almost nothing concerning the multiform
changes in conduct which flow from responses
to collective enterprises, and the various
aspects of group functioning, such as repre-
sentation, consent, leadership, et cetera, are still
shrouded in mystery or submerged in traditions.
And this is peculiarly the sphere in which con-
scious experimentation is most likely to prove
fruitful. Man can affect his biological future
slightly; he can develop but probably not in-
crease his intellectual capacity; these being
avenues of evolution which have apparently

[163]

ADULT EDUCATION

achieved completion or near-completion. And
even the meager opportunities for biological
and mental improvement are dependent upon
the discovery and utilization of social means.
Adult education as a movement is here pre-
sented with a challenging opportunity. Adults
who go forth on the long road which leads to
intelligence will discover before they have trav-
eled far that mere self-improvement is a delu-
sion. Intelligence is itself a relative term — a
term which possesses little or no meaning save
when used as a comparative. One individual
is intelligent — less or more — with respect to
other persons; and the significant components
of his intelligence are derivatives of social
processes. So-called native intelligence is not
in reality intelligence but merely capacity for
accumulating or developing intelligence. Func-
tional intelligence is social in its origins, in its

[164]

FOR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE

materials and in its uses. Consequently, we
do not pursue the path of learning solely for
the purpose of putting more knowledge into our
own behavior. Knowing-behavior, which is
intelligence, is social in two directions: it takes
others into account and it calls forth more in-
telligent responses from others. If then learn-
ing adults wish to live in a social environment
in which their intellectual alertness will count
for something (will get itself realized, i.e., in
power, creative expression, freedom, et cetera)
they will be as eager to improve their collective f
enterprises, their groups, as they are to improve
themselves. Orthodox education may be a
preparation for life but adult education is an
agitating instrumentality for changing life.
Institutions, groups and organizations come
within the scope of continuing, advancing
learning insofar as these collective agencies

[165]

ADULT EDUCATION

furnish the medium for educational experience.
When collective functions no longer make room
for the free play of intellectual diversity, they
abandon the right to claim allegiance from in-
telligent persons. It is no accident that the
most virile adult education of our time paral-
lels functional organizations: farmer-coopera-
tors of Denmark and trade unionists of Great
Britain. Adult education will become an
agency of progress if its short-time goal of self-
improvement can be made compatible with a
long-time, experimental but resolute policy of
changing the social order. Changing individ-
uals in continuous adjustment to changing
social functions — this is the bilateral though
unified purpose of adult learning. Manifestly,
these aims cannot be realized until adult edu-
cators evolve a method adequate to the pur-
pose.

[»66]

X
IN TERMS OF METHOD

"A method which permits us to determine only cases
of stereotyped activity and leaves us helpless in the
face of changed conditions is not a scientific method
at all, and becomes less and less practically useful
with the continual increase of fluidity in modern so-
cial life."

— -W. I. Thomas.

"In the root sense of the words, instruction is build-
ing in, whereas education is leading out."

— C. P. Conger.

IN TERMS OF METHOD

Adult education is a process through which
learners become aware of significant experi-
ence. Recognition of significance leads to
evaluation. Meanings accompany experience
when we know what is happening and what
importance the event includes for our person-
alities. A friend comes excitedly into your
presence exclaiming: "I have had an experi-
ence !" Immediately you become consciously
expectant : you want to know what has caused
this new vivification of his personality and
what interpretation he will place upon it. If
you know him intimately, you will make quick
guesses : he usually sees difficulties where others
see opportunities and therefore you feel cer-
tain that his interpretation will be in the direc-

[169]

ADULT EDUCATION

tion of pessimism; or he sees opportunities
where others see difficulties and therefore you
know that whatever has happened will be in-
corporated into his personality as an added
increment of optimism. In either case you will
be observing a personality in the process of
evaluating experience; you see him in a new
and dramatic setting and you know that what-
ever meaning he attaches to his experience it
will either enrich or impoverish his life.

The real distinction between educated and
uneducated persons is not to be found in such
superficial criteria as academic degrees, formal
study or accumulation of facts ; indeed, formal
learning may, and often does, lead people into
narrow scholarship and out of life. Educated
persons find their satisfactions in bringing
knowledge to bear upon experience, and the
best-informed person is still ignorant if his

[170]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

knowing is not also a lively ingredient of his
living. But it is not wholly correct to say,
"Bring knowledge to bear upon experience" ;
knowledge, rather, emerges from experience.
Intelligence is the light which reveals educa-
tional opportunities in experience. Life is ex-
periencing and intelligent living is a way of
making experience an educational adventure.
To be educated is not to be informed but to
find illumination in informed living. Periods
of intellectual awakening are correctly named
"enlightenments" for it is then that lovers of
wisdom focus the light of learning upon ex-
perience and thereby discover new meanings
for life, new reasons for living.

Our lives are successive valuations of experi-
ence : in youth we need to extract from life its
highest yield of emotional experience (how
fatal it is when schools attempt to make little

Ti7>J

ADULT EDUCATION

intellectuals out of children who need so much
to feel the world!) but if intelligence does not
enter to temper, to give meaning to emotions,
we shall grow old without growing up. Growth
should be a process of integrating emotions
with thought, an evolving capacity for feeling
more deeply and thinking more clearly. Edu-
cative experience spans the whole of life. And
experience proceeds from any situation to
which adjustment is made with accompanying
mental release. Experiences can never happen
twice for we move forward into time as chang-
ing organisms; education, by the same token,
can never stop without abandoning personality
to the barren existence of instinctive, habitual
responses. Even cynics who pretend that all
experience ends in illusion continue to intellec-
tualize their illusions, to search for the meaning
of meaningless life.

[172]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

Conventional education has somehow be-
come enslaved to a false premise: knowledge is
conceived to be a precipitation, a sediment of
the experience of others; it is neatly divided
into subjects which in turn are parceled out to
students, not because students express eagerness
or interest, but because the subjects fit into a
traditional scheme — so much mathematics, so
much history, so much language, et cetera, and
above all so much regard for disciplinary values
as to make even the study of interesting sub-
jects an uninteresting task. Happy the stu-
dent whose teacher knows more than his
subject. And brave the teacher who dares to
reveal his special subject in the context of the
whole of life and learning.

Subjects, we need to be reminded, are merely
convenient labels for portions of knowledge to
which specialists have given attention. Re-

[173]

ADULT EDUCATION

search is probably clarified by the department-
alizing of knowledge; the investigator who
calls himself an economist will undoubtedly
profit by delimiting the area of his inquiry, by
specifying his problems. If, on the other hand,
teachers assume that education can be achieved
by the same procedure, they will ultimately
succeed in reversing the true educative process;
their students will be induced to view education
as mastery of subjects instead of mastery of
life. After all, it requires no more than com-
mon insight to perceive that life does not pre-
sent itself to us in the form of experiences some
of which may be labeled economic, some
psychic, some social, some linguistic, et cetera.
It may be well enough to be taught that there
are phenomena which are predominantly eco-
nomic, et cetera, but there can never be a purely
economic experience. The falsest view of life,

[174]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

as in the fable of the blindfolded men and the
elephant, is one which rests upon some particu-
larism as its point of reference. For example,
in purchasing a pair of shoes a man certainly
goes through motions which fit the category of
economics; but no economist who is not also
aware of the psychological cogitations which
have preceded the sale can make a proper in-
terpretation of the event; and these mental
preliminaries are also accompanied by social
implications: one does not buy even a pair of
shoes without in some manner influencing or
being influenced by others. Did the man buy
the right pair of shoes — right with respect to
the shape of his foot, the kind of use to which
the shoes will be put, his income, his knowledge
of leather and shoe-manufacturing? Did he
pay the right price? Were the shoes made in
a union shop? Was the salesman who sold the

[175]

ADULT EDUCATION

shoes under-paid? This is, of course, an
absurd refinement of illustration but it requires
a simple absurdity to demonstrate how pedantic
it is to assume that we can understand life by
studying subjects.

Many educators who have come to realize
that most of their subject-matter disappears
from the minds of students shortly after gradu-
ation fall back upon the consolation that at
least students have been disciplined — they will
know how to find knowledge even if they do
not possess it. This apology carries the premise
another step in the wrong direction: our minds,
our personalities, are not repositories into which
knowledge is dumped in the hope that it can be
reclaimed in the hour of need. If we could fish
in the waters of memory for needed knowledge,
our catches would be perpetual disappoint-
ments : knowledge like fish, either grows or dies.

[i76]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

And if knowledge grows, it is because knowing
was once a part of experiencing.

Arguments directed against the subject-ap-
proach in education, even when sufficiently
forceful to win intellectual approval of educa-
tors, will make little headway until accom-
panying experiments are made possible. Our
conventional system of education — from kin-
dergarten to university — is committed to sub-
jects. Preoccupation with the content of
education has so far overbalanced pedagogical
thought that schoolmen now find their center
of interest in curriculum-making: the process of
transforming the school into a department-
store bargain counter. The system derives its
chief momentum from subject-teaching — a
method which is compatible with a perverted
and shallow pragmatism and profitable to an
industrial order which requires technicians, not

[1771

ADULT EDUCATION

educated men and women. The method is also
congenial to, if indeed it did not evolve from,
the conception which views education as some-
thing from which one graduates. How could
the various "points" and entrance requirements
and degree requisites be determined — how, in-
deed, would any one know when education was
finished — if institutions of learning were de-
prived of this convenient measuring-rod of
subjects? Happily, students of the universi-
ties and colleges possess wit enough to see the
serio-comic response which is made to subject-
controlled education: they call those who take
it all too seriously "credit-baggers" and "de-
gree-hunters."

Adult education, happily, requires neither
entrance nor exit examinations. Adult learners
attend classes voluntarily and they leave when-
ever the teaching falls below trie standard of

ti?8]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

interest. What they learn converges upon life,
not upon commencement and diploma. The
external tokens of education are removed so
that the learning process may stand or fall on
its intrinsic merits. (It would be an experi-
ence for conventional teachers who call the roll,
cover the subject in so many weeks, and grade
their students within a fraction of a point if
they had to make their way as teachers on no
other basis than ability to interest voluntary
students.) And because adult education is
free from the yoke of subject-tradition, its
builders are able to experiment boldly even in
the sacrosanct sphere of pedagogical method.
Indeed, if adult education is to produce a
difference of quality in the use of intelligence,
its promoters will do well to devote their major
concern to method and not content.

Life is confronted in the form of situations,

[179]

ADULT EDUCATION

occasions which necessitate action. Education
is a method for giving situations a setting, for
analyzing complex wholes into manageable, j
understandable parts, and a method which
points out the path of action which, if fol-
lowed, will bring the circumstance within the
area of experiment. Since that education is
best which most adequately helps us to meet
situations, the best teaching method is one
which emerges from situation-experiences. Or,
in Dewey's words, "The trained mind is one
that best grasps the degree of observation,
forming of ideas, reasoning and experimental
testing required in any special case, and that
profits the most, in future thinking, by mistakes
made in the past. What is important is that
the mind should be sensitive to problems and
skilled in methods of attack and solution." "
We shall have need, before any given situation

[180]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

is properly confronted, of all the relevant ex-
perience of others which bears upon our case —
experience which has been stored away in books
and that which comes freshly from researches
and expert knowledge.

Situations arise when our aims or purposes
are impeded, when our wishes fall beneath our
present capacities. Conscious effort needs
therefore to be directed along two channels:
(a) inward toward the wish, its incidence, its
validity, its realizability and its integrity with
respect to our total personality; and (b) out-
ward toward the circumstances which, for the
moment, act as barriers to the fulfillment of
the wish. This analysis of the situation fur-
nishes the first set of problems with which we
shall have to deal. A college professor writes
to explain the situation in which he finds him-
self with respect to an antagonistic administra-

[181]

ADULT EDUCATION

tion. He is not, so far as his description re-
veals, aware of any problem arising within his
personality. Before a letter — suggesting that
he make an analysis of his situation in terms
of his past activities and their contributory re-
lation to his purposes — can reach him, he is
discharged and now writes for recommenda-
tions for another position. He is over-conscious
of the outward circumstances and is therefore
not capable of sensitizing himself for the inner
analysis. The situation has led to no educative
experiences and his present mood of resentment
will undoubtedly accentuate the personality
difficulties which in turn will inevitably lead
to similar situations. On the other hand, peo-
ple who find all the problems within them-
selves, drop below the level of adjustment
through self-depreciation. We have then in
every situation a series of problems some of

[182]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

which are predominantly relevant to the behav-
ing personality, some to the impeding environ-
ment and some to the situation-as-a-whole
which includes various forms of relatedness be-
tween the individual and his circumstances.
Such problems may be classified for purposes
of analysis by asking three questions: (a)
What part of my personality is here involved
about which I need further enlightenment?
(b) What further information do I need con-
cerning the various aspects of the impeding
environment? (c) What do I need to know
about the nature of my relatedness to impor-
tant phases of the circumstances when the
situation is viewed as a whole?

With this much preparation or readiness to
meet the situation, we may now proceed to its
intelligent consideration, assuming of course,
that the situation is regarded as one out of

[183]

ADULT EDUCATION

which we mean to derive educative experience.
A small number of self-dependent individuals
possess sufficient perspicacity and diligence to
follow the pathway toward action, that is, ar-
rive at solutions for situations which are satis-
fying to themselves, without further assistance.
It is doubtful, however, whether or not their
experiences should be called in the highest sense
educational. Most of us find ourselves in
significant situations which involve others, situ-
ations which are explicitly or implicitly social ;
we might lift ourselves by our own bootstraps
but we might also find that we had lifted our-
selves out of, above the situation, not through
it. Many "self-made" business men find in
later years that worship of their maker is not
enough; they become almost sentimental in
giving credit to their colleagues and workers —
after the time has passed when these collabora-

[i84]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

tors might have shared in the attendant crea-
tive experiences. Most of us, if we are intent
upon making experience yield its intellectual
content, need to discuss our situations with
those who are concerned with us, with those
who are likely to be influenced and with those
who have special information which is relevant
to our needs.

Discussion is more than talk. We think in
verbal forms, and on the whole those who are
able to vocalize their ideas, transmit them ex-
pressively to others, are more likely to live
adequately than those who are inarticulate.
But mere talking has no more educational con-
tent than bellowing, mooing, barking. Con-
versation may, indeed, turn back upon itself —
as it so frequently does among those who use
language as a medium of gossip — and come to
be a closed circuit: closed with respect to

[is*]

ADULT EDUCATION

vocabulary as well as ideas. (A persistent de-
mand has come to express ideas in one-syllable
words — to popularize; this is one way of cir-
cumscribing language. If an idea cannot be
accurately expressed in one-syllable words, it is
a falsification of the idea to make the attempt;
besides, it degrades those who read or listen by
depriving them of incentives for making higher
uses of language.) Words become habits —
whereupon they lose their teaching function.
Think of the countless words spoken aimlessly,
pointlessly, futilely about that universal sub-
ject of conversation, the weather! Nobody
does anything about it, as Mark Twain re-
marked, and in spite of the fact that we have
a rapidly-growing science of weather it is prob-
ably true that superstition is more rampant in
this sphere of thought than in any other save
that of death. The talk of most people about

[186]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

weather has gone round and round the circle
of sameness until they are unable to make
weather- words jump the groove of habit. Con-
sequently they receive no education from a
prodigious amount of talk about a fascinating
theme. Pointless talk which follows no rules
and consists of simple, quick responses proceed-
ing from one person to another may, of course,
become extremely entertaining, and this is
putting vocal chords and language to good
uses; we should, however, value this sort of
talk for what it is, namely, recreation, not edu-
cation. (We might even pay more attention to
the playful possibilities of words when used in
serious contexts.)

Discussion is organized talk. When two or
more persons exchange experiences for the pur-
pose of throwing light upon a situation, and
when the confronting of the situation is itself

[187)

ADULT EDUCATION

regarded as an educative opportunity, a tacit
recognition to the effect that certain rules are
to be followed, is present. If, for example, the
group exceeds five or six in number, it usually
becomes necessary to agree upon a chairman or
leader whose functions will be to keep the dis-
cussion going, to maintain its direction, to en-
list active participation of all members of the
group, to point out discrepancies and relations,
to sum up arguments, facts and conclusions, et
cetera. When discussion is used as method for
adult teaching, the teacher becomes group-
chairman ; he no longer sets problems and then
casts about with various kinds of bait until he
gets back his preconceived answer ; nor is he the
oracle who supplies answers which students
carry off in their notebooks ; his function is not
to profess but to evoke — to draw out, not pour
in ; he performs in various degrees the office of

[188]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

interlocutor (one who questions and in-
terprets), prolocutor (one who brings all ex-
pressions before the group), coach (one who
trains individuals for team-play), and strate-
gist (one who organizes parts into wholes and
keeps the total action aligned with the group's
purpose). The teacher or chairman does not
organize discussion — he keeps it in organized
channels.82 Whatever he brings to the group
in the form of opinions, facts and experiences
must be open to question and criticism on the
same terms as the contributions of other par-
ticipants.

Debates also follow rules but these are of no
value to discussion. The debater selects his
conclusion in advance and then proceeds to
gather facts and opinions to prove his case.
His aim is victory, not enlightenment. He
represents "militarism in the intellectr'l

[189]

ADULT EDUCATION

life." •* In debates we can win only by exclud-
ing other points of view whereas in discussions
we can achieve only by inclusions. Purposeless
conversation may have too little point but de-
bate has too much. The naive assumption that
all questions have two sides distorts debates at
the outset ; every question has as many sides as
there are interests involved and no situation is
properly confronted until all relevant interests
have been considered. "Where a debate makes
much of logic, conference makes more of psy-
chology. It deals not so much with arguments
as with reasons. The distinction is important.
A man's arguments are the reasons that recite
well. They do his heart credit, and his logical
head. His reasons — more truly so-called — are
things that lie deeper. They are the meaning
to him of his own experience.,, M Rules for
discussion will consequently be compatible with

[190]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

the fundamental purpose of conference which
is, not to defeat any one, but rather to arrive at
a joint conclusion. These rules or guides will
moreover be consistent with the aim of adult
education which is to make "arriving," not con-
cluding, an educative venture. And, one of the
more important rules to bear in mind is this:
discussion does not solve situations; it reveals
experimental roads to action ; real solutions are
behavioristic not intellectualistic. After we
have recognized a situation, analyzed its in-
volved problems and sought for relevant in-
formation and experience, we are prepared to
envisage the consequences of various lines of
action. Ensuing activities are functions of per-
sonalities; each person who sets forth to ex-
periment in the light of the direction provided
by preceding discussion will experience unique
qualities. Education has been forwarded by

[191]

ADULT EDUCATION

the group process; subsequent activity brings
this educative process within the scope of
deeper realities, the realities of necessitous liv-
ing. Discussion is neither substitute for scien-
tific method nor refuge for those who, being too
timid to live experimentally, hide from the
actualities of life. Orderly thinking carries us
within sight of new departures in behavior — is
analogous to hypothesis in scientific method.
Activities ultimately validate or invalidate
thought, but it is thinking which liberates ac-
tion from instinctive, habitual forms. Discus-
sion leads to experimental attitudes and also
provides a social medium in which experimen-
talism can count for something. We do not
"think through" problems; we act through.
Thinking carries us only so far, then action
must follow or we become lost in the wilder-
ness of verbalism.

[192]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

The situation-approach to learning involves,
then, (a) recognition of what constitutes a situ-
ation; (b) analysis of the situation into its
constituent problems; (c) discussion of these
problems in the light of available and needed
experiences and information; (d) utilization of
available information and experience for pur-
poses of (e) formulating experimental solu-
tions; (f) acting upon experimental proposi-
tions with a view of testing, and if necessary,
revamping the assumptions which discussion
has reavealed.* The subject-approach to

* These steps have been arranged in the following
order in the pamphlet issued by the Inquiry, 129 East
52d Street, New York City, called Creative Discussion:

"(l) What situation have we here?

(2) What sort of problem does it show?

(3) What new information does it involve?

(4) What action will set us on towards a solution?"

[193]

ADULT EDUCATION

education, on the contrary, begins by filling the
student's mind with specialized sequences of
systematized information which he is expected
to recall and use in future situations. But,
specialized information, content material, will
come into the equation of learning with fresh-
ness and vigor if it comes when actually
needed. Otherwise our activities will be con-
stantly carrying us on into new adjustments
while our memories are surfeited with old
information.

It will be readily seen that adult education
calls for a new kind of text-book as well as a
new type of teacher. Under conventional
educational systems both teacher and text at-
tempt to make situations fit subjects whereas
the demand is to make subjects serve situations.
Teachers of youth assume that their function is
to condition students for a preconceived kind of

[194]

IN TERMS OF METHOD

conduct; teachers of adults, on the other hand,
will need to be alert in learning how the prac-
tical experiences of life can enliven subjects.
The purpose of adult education is to give
meaning to the categories of experiences, not to
classifications of knowledge. Specialists who
wish to participate in adult learning will need
to do considerable collaborating among them-
selves before they learn how to relate their
subdivided knowledge to current situations. It
is perhaps true that no single group in modern
life stands in greater need of adult education
than experts, specialists : those who continue to
know "more and more about less and less."

[195]

POSTSCRIPT

POSTSCRIPT

"There are two ways of taking the present world-
wide agitation. We may take it negatively, as an
evidence of disintegration, or positively, as a search
for new meanings."

— M. C. Otto.

Modern life derives its momentum from
three interrelated sources: science^ specialism
and industrialism. The combined impact of
these forces distinguishes our time from all
previous periods of history. We are modern in
the sense that our behavior is predominantly
a response to scientific discoveries, experts and
machine-production. "The world is now faced
with a self -evolving system, which it cannot
stop." M Where will it take us? There is no
knowing.

[199]

ADULT EDUCATION

We can be moderately certain of but one
conclusion: adjustments to the propelling
forces in the modern world cannot be fruitfully
achieved until intellectual, moral and spiritual
values emerge which are capable of giving di-
rection and meaning to life. Our ideas and our
activities now come from science ; our ideals are
traditional. The forces which impel are
dynamic; the means which control are impo-
tent. We still attempt to bring the modern
world into the context of unworkable political
theory, superannuated ethics, irrational re-
ligion and inept education.

Optimistic interpreters explain this hiatus in
modern life in terms of time alone: they con-
tend that science and the technologies are
merely ahead of our capacities for adjustment
— that we will soon catch up; or, if it happens
that we never can catch up, that our knowledge

[200]

POSTSCRIPT

of things will always be in advance of our
ability to control, we may rest content in
acknowledging the inevitable "lag." This view
furnishes a convenient name for one aspect of
the process but, like so many explanations
which stop when a suitable symbol has been
found, it illumines the theme but slightly. If
life is to become merely adjustment to the com-
pulsions of science, specialism and industry, the
worth of human personality and experience
will cumulatively deteriorate. If life is to have
more meaning than is implied in making up
time, in overcoming lags, we shall need to learn
how to make adjustments ofy not to; we shall
need to learn how to relate ourselves to mate-
rial forces in such manner as to produce quali-
tative differences in both. If thinking can
come abreast of doing only retrospectively,
that is, long after the doing has exerted its

[201]

ADULT EDUCATION

dominant influence, it will be scarcely worth
the trouble to learn how to think. If, on the
other hand, intelligence is able to expand our
powers, utilize our reserve energies in more
complete self-expression and creativeness, re-
veal to us the only freedom of which we are
capable, illumine our enjoyments, integrate our
personalities and lead us to dynamic fellowship
— if, to sum up, intelligence is the price which
man is obliged to pay for continuous growth,
no effort directed toward its increase can be
wasted.

Growth is the goal of life. Power, knowl-
edge, freedom, enjoyment, creativity — these
and all other immediate ends for which we
strive are contributory to the one ultimate goal
which is to grow, to become. And the meaning
of life is always an emergent concomitant of
striving. Otherwise, life is illusion, for ends

[202]

POSTSCRIPT

which can be achieved — which are conceived in
terms of static qualities — leave the self with-
out further incentives to growth. If there is at
once a tragic and heroic side to life, it lies in
this: there are no realizable ultimate goals
which can be reached without depriving us — in
the very act of consummation — of their mean-
ing.

Q. — "Does effort become impossible the mo-
ment success is seen to be impossible ?"

A. — "No. But it at once becomes irra-
tional."

Reply by For berg: "Unquestionably that is
so, if success be the final aim of effort, the
goal the final aim of the runner. But
what if the striving were a final aim in
itself! What if there were no goal to be

[203]

ADULT EDUCATION

attained or, what is the same thing for the
runner, only a goal set at an infinite dis-
tance? What if the goal were there for
the sake of the race, not the race for the
sake of the goal?"

— Friederich Carl Forbero's
Apologie seines angeblichen Atheismus.

If then the meaning of life is to be dis-
covered in becoming, education can serve as re-
vealor only insofar as the learning process is
continuous — coterminous with the functions of
personality. Education is superficially con-
ceived when viewed as a preparation for life.
Education is life.

[204]

REFERENCES

REFERENCES

In addition to the following references which
bear a direct relationship to the present essay,
interested readers may receive further sugges-
tions by applying to The Workers Education
Bureau of America, 476 West 23d Street, New
York City; The World Association for Adult
Education, 16 Russell Square, London, W. C.
l ; The American Association for Adult Edu-
cation,* 2 West 45th Street, New York City;
The American Library Association, 86 East
Randolph Street, Chicago, Illinois; Pocono
Peoples College, Henryville, Pennsylvania; In-
ternational People's College, Elsinore, Den-
mark.

* The Publications Committee of this organization is now
preparing bibliographies.

[207]

ADULT EDUCATION

Foreword

1/ For further elaboration of Danish civili-
zation, see Denmark, A Co-operative Common-
wealth by Frederic C. Howe, Harcourt 1921;
Farm Life Abroad by E. C. Branson, University
of North Carolina Press 1924; The Folk High
Schools of Denmark and the Development of a
Farming Community by Begtrup, Lund and
Manniche, Oxford University Press, London;
and the articles of Joseph K. Hart published in
the Survey: Will Denmark Disarm? October 1,
1925; The Plastic Years, April 1, 1926; The
Secret of the Independent Farmers of Den-
mark, June 1, 1926.

Chapter I

2. B. A. Yeaxlee, Spiritual Values in Adult
Education; 2 volumes, Oxford University Press
1925.

Chapter III

3. Edgar A. Singer, Modern Thinkers and
Present Problems; Holt 1923; p. 278.

[208]

REFERENCES

4. Same, p. 279.

5. Nikolai Bukharin, Historical Material*
ism; International Publishers 1925; p. 34.

Chapter IV

6. See M. P. Follett, New State; Longmans
1920, and Creative Experience; 1924.

7. Horace M. Kallen, Culture and Democ-
racy in the United States; Boni & Liveright
1924; p. 209.

8. See No. 6.

9. A. D. Sheffield, Joining in Public Discus-
sion; Doran 1922.

Chapter V

10. R. G. Gordon, Personality; Harcourt,
Brace 1926; p. 42.

11. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution;
Holt 1923.

12. John Dewey, Human Nature and Con-
duct; Holt 1922.

[209]

ADULT EDUCATION

13. Edwin B. Holt, The Freudian Wish;
Holt 1915.

14. See No. 6.

15. See No. 10.

16. See No. 12.

Chapter VI

17. The New Republic, June 16, 1926.

Chapter VII

18. Charles H. Cooley, Social Process;
Scribner 1918 ; p. 382. (See Chapters XXXII
and XXXV.)

19. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Mod-
ern World; Macmillan 1926; p. 279-280.

20. The Way Out, Essays on the Meaning
and Purpose of Adult Education by Lord Hal-
dane, A. E. Zimmern, Harold J. Laski, Albert
Mansbridge and others; Oxford University
Press 1923; p. 100-101.

2 1 . Leo Stein, On Teaching Art and Letters ;

[210]

REFERENCES

The New Republic, March 3, 1926. (See also
his Art of Painting, December 2, 1925; ^Es-
thetic Experience, and Knowing and Feeling,
March 17, 1926; Art and the Frame, March 24,
1926; Personality and Identification, March 31,
1926; Art and Society, April 14, 1926.

22. John Dewey, Experience and Nature;
Open Court 1925; p. 358. (See also Chap-'
ter IX on Experience, Nature and Art.)

23. Georg Brandes, Creative Spirits; Crowell
1923; p. 220.

24. A. A. Goldenweiser, Early Civilization;
Knopf 1922; p. 183.

Chapter VIII

25. See Modernizing the College, Adolph E.
Meyer; American Review, Vol. IV, No. 3.

26. See Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion;
Harcourt 1922; and The Phantom Public;
1925.

27. See No. 18; Chapter V, Particularism
Versus the Organic View.

[211]

ADULT EDUCATION

Chapter IX

28. C. Delisle Burns, The Contact Between
Minds; Macmillan 1923; and Industry and
Civilization; Allen (London) 1925.

29. For a more detailed exposition of this
point of view regarding functional groups as
representations of interests, see Social Discov-
ery by E. C. Lindeman; Republic Publishing
Company 1924.

30. See No. 9.

Chapter X

31. John Dewey, How We Think; Heath
1910; p. 78.

32. For further details in connection with
discussion methods, see Joining in Public Dis-
cussion by A. D. Sheffield; Foundations of
Method by W. H. Kilpatrick; Macmillan
1925; Conferences, Committees, Conventions
and How to Run Them by E. E. Hunt; Har-
per 1925; The Why and How of Group Dis-

[212]

REFERENCES

cussion by H. S. Elliott; Association Press
1923; Creative Discussion and other pamphlets
(published by The Inquiry, 129 East 52d
Street, New York City).

33. H. A. Overstreet, Influencing Human
Behavior; People's Institute 1925; p. 253. See
also his Reason and the Fight Image, New Re-
public^ December 20, 1922.

34. Creative Discussion^ p. 16 (published by
The Inquiry, 129 East 52d Street, New York
City).

Postscript

35. See No. 19; p. 287.

[213]

INDEX

INDEX

Activity, 107
Activities, 162
Adjusting process, 135
Adjustment, 68
Adjustments, 135, 146, 147,

156, 199
JEschylus, 43
Americans, 51
American art, 102
Amusements, 124
Applied science, XX9
Art, 106, 112
Art-collecting, 87
Art impulses, 112
Artistic experience, 109
Artists, 92
Art spirit, no
Aspirations, 85
Association, 156
Attitudes, 162

B

Bacon, Francis, 31, 32, 43
Beauty, 88, 106, 107
Behavior, 138
Bosses, 125
Brandes, Georg, 109
British Parliament, 120
Bukharin, N., 34
Burns, C Delisle, 154

Capitalism, j6
Capitalist, 22t 36

Casts, hereditary, 134

Cause and effect, 132

Centrality, illusion of, 131

Chairman, 188

Character, 54

Child, 50

Children, 172

Choice, 48

Citizen, 56, 126, 128, 156

Citizenship, 127, 128

Class, 151

Class-consciousness, 151

Classic tradition, 97

Classicism, 102

Coercion, 161

Collective ideas, IOI

Collectivism, 151, 152, 159

Collectivity, 148

College, 76

College presidents, 118

Commissions, 125

Communication, 139, 140,

148
Communities, 53
Community, 50, 154
Community process, 93
Compensation, psychic, 124
Conduct, 18
Conference, 191
Conflict, 71, 146, 159, 163,
Conflict, creative, 153
Congress, 121
Conversation, 138, 185
Cooley, Charles H., 131
Cortex, 69

Creative discussion, 193
Creative mood, 90, 93

[217]

INDEX

Creativeness, 87, 93, 147
Creativity, 84
Critics, 108
Cultural ends, 99
Cultural ideas, 101
Culture, 101, in
Curricula, 118, 122
Customs, 42

Dancing, 107

Danish Farmer, 60, 89

Debates, 189, 190

Degrees, Academic, 170

Democracy, 129

Denmark, vii, viii, 6, IOO,

166
Departmental, Government,

126
Dewey, John, 69, 73, 109,

180
Dictator, 127
Difference, 52, 53, 55, Uh

162
Differences, 200
Disappointed One, 77
Discipline, 27
Discussion, 185, 188, 192
Disraeli, 31
Divergence, 53
Drama, 107

Economics, 74

Educational Opportunities,

28
Egotist, 77
Eighth Grade, 27

Emotions, 104, 105
Employees, 160
Ends, 47, 94
England, 100

Enjoyable Experience, 99
Enjoyment, 98, 09, no
Enterprises, Collective, 159
Environment, 25, 74, 75, 183
Environment, social, 165
Essay on Liberty, 65
Esthetics, 88
Esthetic Values, 107
Ethics, 158, 199
Euripides, 43
Europe, 103
Evolution, 104
Examinations, 178
Experience, 10, 24, 25, 137,

138, 141, 169, 170, 171, 172
Experience, Economic, 174
Experience, Educational, 154,

184
Experience, Emotional, 171
Experiences, Creative, 68
Experiment, 24
Expert Functions, 137
Experts, 125, 127, 130, 132,

134, 139, Ml .
Experts, Technical, 126
Extcrnalism, 133, 141

Fact-finding, 23
Facts, 20, 21, 170
Fact-using, 23
Fantasies, 73, 93
Farmer, 150
Feelings, 100, 106
Fellowship, Dynamic, 201

[218]

INDEX

Folk Expression, 102
Follett, M. P., 56, 69
Forbergr, Friedrich Carl, 203
Formalism, 27
France, Anatole, v, 106
Free Will, 65
Friction, 146
Functions, Collective, 166

Games, 59, 107
Generalization, 117
Geniuses, 92
Germany, 100
Goals, 47, 203
Goldenweiser, Alexander,

in
Goodness, 24
Gordon, R. G., 69
Government, 125
Government, Parliamentary,

129
Graduate Study, 123
Great Britain, 166
Great Society, 36
Greek Culture, ix
Group Mind, 154
Groups, 156, 157, 159, 165,

188
Growth, 172, 201

H

Habits, 25, 187
Habit Systems, 51
Happiness, 74
Heredity, 74
Higher Life, 100
High School, 27

Holt, Edwin, 69
Honesty, 161

Human Nature, la; 31, 33,
67

Ideals, 72
Imperialism, 36
Incentives, 51
Independence, 34
Individual, 157
Individualism, 140-150, 151
Individualists, 148, 149
Individualities, 52, 55
Industrial Organization, 36
Industry, 119, 123, 124
Information, 19
Institutions, 165
Integration, 18, 104, 132
Intellectual class, 27
Intellectualism, 105
Intelligence, 20, 105
Intelligence, Native, 164
Intelligence, Functional, 164
Intelligence tests, 73
Interests, 22, 153. 159
Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, 126
Inquiry, 193
Issues, Technical, 126

James, William, 52

K

Knowledgment, 20
Knowledge, 31

[219]

INDEX

Labor, 38, 39
Laws of Nature, 21
Laymen, 136
Liberalism, 129
Life, Collective, 159
Life-Process, 131
Literature, 102
Logic, 105, 190

M

Machiavellian, 65

Management, Industrial, 125

Mass Production, 119

Maurice, M. Charles, 106

Meanings, 109, 169

Means, 47, 94

Method, 162

Mill, John Stuart, 65-66

Mind Group, 154

Miners, 150

Moralists, 158

Morgan, Lloyd, 69

Municipal Managers, 126

Music, 102

Mussolini, Benito, 129

N

Nationalism, 36
Need, 149
Nietzsche, 77

Objectivity, 158
Oculist, 135

One and the Many, 66
Order, Social, 166
Organism, 145, 146
Organism as a whole, 133
Orientation Studies, 122
Organization, Social, 163

Pacifists, 157
Painting, 102
Particularists, 131
Pater, Walter, 71
Personality, 49, 56, 57
Pessimism, 31
Ponsonby, Arthur, 68
Power, 31-34
Phenomena, Social, 154
Philistinism, 97
Play, 58
Politics, 91
Politicians, 160
Practice, Social, 148
Principles, Ethical, 156
Process, Social, 153, 154. l6l
Profit-Production, 76
Prosperity, 5*
Psychologists, 17
Psychology, 10, 151
Psycho-Therapy, 71
Public Agencies, 28

Reason, 18
Recreation, 58-124
Relation, 78, 155
Religionists, 161
Renaissance, 118
Response, 23, 155

[220]

INDEX

Revolution, 77
Revolutionists, 75
Revolution of the mind, 37
Rousseau, John Jacques, 66

Subject-teaching, 177
Superstition, 186
Survey Courses, 121
Survival, 160
Synthesis, 52-53

Scholasticism, 118
Schools, 50

Science, 31-32, 105, 118, 152
Scientific Method, 34
Scientific Subjects, 35
Scientists, 117
Self, 49, 79
Self-expression, 57, 83, 84,

148
Self -improvement, 164
Self-knowledge, 72
Sensibility, 112
Sentimentality, 160
Sentiments, 104
Singer, Edgar A., 32
Situations, 8, 180-181-182
Situations, Approach, 9, 193
Situation-as-a-whole, 183
Skill, 19

Social Control, 92, 139
Social Order, 14
Socrates, 43
Society, 66, 159
Specialism, 49, 109-110, 117
Specialists, Medical, 132
Stimulus, 23, 67, 68, 155
State, 120

Structure, Social, 153
Struggle, 145-146
Struggle Technique, 38
Subjects, 173, 176
Subject, approach, 177
Subject matter, 9

Tariff Commission, 126

Taste, 97

Teachers, 12, 107-108, 159,

194
Technicians, 125
Technique, Collective, 159
Technologies, 40
Technologists, 126
Textbook, 194
Theory, Social, 148
Thinkers, 133
Thinking, 104, 152
Thinking, orderly, 192
Thought, 18

Trade Unionism, 123-124
Trade Union, 38
Trade Unionists, 91, 156
Traditions, 42
Twain, Mark, 186

U

Unamuno, Miguel, 19
Undergraduate Study, 122
United States, 76, 121, 140
Universities, 118
Utopias, 72, 130

Valuations, 171
Values, 22, 158

[221]

INDEX

View, Organic, 13a
Vision, 130

Vocational Education, 47
Vocational-Non, 7
Volkshochshulen, viii
Voting, 56

W

Whitman, Walt, xi, ix, 61

Wisdom, 43

Words, 186

Workers, 7

Worker's Education, 39

Work's Councils, 124

Wateau, 71

Western Civilization, 33

Whitehead, A. N., 106

Yeaxlee, Basil M.
Youth, 42, 92
Youths, 85

11

[222]

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DATE DUE

Oft *> 4 «***

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Demco, Inc. 38-293

LC5215.L5 1926a

3 9358 00290182 2

Lindeman, Eduard Christian

The meaning of adult
education. New York, New
Republic, inc., 1926.

290182